How to Check If Your Tweets Are Cited in the Media
As someone who is never witty on Twitter, it hardly bothers me that anything I type will be highlighted on a website or in some news article – unless someone really cares about my thoughts on cats and Animal. Crossing . However, there is a quick and easy way to see for yourself if your wits have surfaced elsewhere on Twitter. (And you might be surprised!)
Thanks to Patrick for reminding me of this:
When I tried it, all my results were boring. I blame it on my enthusiasm, which has thrown my Twitter into every story I write – a semi-delusional attempt to popularize myself with brute force. (It still didn’t work; maybe I need to work on writing more dad jokes.)
Others had more satisfying (and surprising) results:
And of course, the Twitter users cited above will see that they have been cited in this article the next time they search for themselves; the great cycle of life continues.
It’s also a great reminder that if you want to ditch your Twitter prominence at any time, finding what you are quoting and then deleting that tweet can help you regain some anonymity. (This assumes that the media object in question did not take a screenshot of your tweet or embed it in place of the tweet itself.)
It’s also not a bad habit to set up some kind of auto-delete mechanism for your old tweets. Sure, they won’t be there to supplement your engagement statistics – for the few of you who care about this sort of thing – but it never hurts to make sure that a scathing tweet you posted years ago doesn’t come back to haunt you. …