Twitter Search = Fail

I don’t usually have negative things to say about Twitter.  Yes I have drunk the Twitter kool-aid, but this time I can’t ignore this.  We recently ran a Twitter contest where entrants had to send tweets using a specific hash tag.  The intent was to search all the hash tags and pick winners randomly.

Well, much to my surprise when the contest was to close, tweets went missing when I searched for the specific hash tag.  After some research, I came to the conclusion that the tweets were not missing, but not showing up in the search results.  Tweets older than 9 days were not showing up in the search results.  Try it for yourself.  Look at one of your tweets that is older than 9 days than use the Advanced Twitter Search.  Your tweet will appear to be gone.  What is even more frustrating is that on the advanced search, you have the option of search by date and going back prior to 9 days ago.  Why would Twitter have these options if the functionality isn’t there.

This is extremely important to know for those relying on hash tags and history on Twitter when running contests and such.  I’m not sure if this is going to be an on-going issue or to be corrected.  Needless to say, this functional mishap is a big fail in my books.

Have you needed to access historical tweets older than 9 days?  Please share your thoughts on this.