Collecting all or at least a good sample of tweets related to a particular event

Question

I'm interested in using the Tweets in a Complex Networks research project for which I've to collect a good amount of tweets(unbiased sample of tweets) that're related to a particular event, for example, say Boston Bombing. I need to collect the tweets that're related to this event from the event date to current date.

Tried Search API and got to know that I can't retrieve tweets older than a week. I've a small doubt regarding Streaming API, does Streaming API allow you to get older tweets and not real-time tweets. Also, I don't need tweets that're of a particular user.

Is there any way that I can collect the necessary tweets? If there aren't any, can you give me any other archiving sources that I can use?

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

The streaming API is for accessing what is happening right now, there is no option to "replay" the stream from some arbitrary point in the past. You can access past tweets from individual users' timelines (up to 3,200), but this would require knowing who had tweeted about your event and, as you say, you can only search the past week.

If you are prepared to pay for it, you can get tweets since the start of 2010 via DataSift.

Answer 2

Historical data going back to the very first Tweet ever is only available from Gnip.