Library of Congress Archiving Every Twitter Entry
Watch what you say on Twitter... it may last forever.
The official Twitter blog reports that every entry posted on Twitter will be shelved in the world's largest archive: the Library of Congress. Why? That's a good question considering a good chunk of entries talk about the latest boyfriend, a strange rash, or other personal notes. The good news is that not all accounts will be stored, just the ones that aren't protected (which apparently is a small percentage).
"Recently, the Library of Congress signaled to us that the public tweets we have all been creating over the years are important and worthy of preservation," said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. He goes into the numbers behind Twitter, reporting that fifty-five million tweets are posted each day and made publicly available. Many of them depict events as they unfold such as the Haitian earthquake, the breakup of Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, and other significant global events.
"It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research," he said. "It's very exciting that tweets are becoming part of history." The donation to the Library of Congress will dig deep into the past, covering the very first tweet posted by co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006, and on through to the tweets of today.
The Library of Congress also updated its blog to reflect the new Twitter archive announcement. The post describes many high-profile tweets that will land in the archive including President Obama's tweet after winning the 2008 election, and two tweets from a photojournalist who was arrested in Egypt and then freed thanks to his Twitter entries. Despite all the "social networking" aspects surrounding Twitter, it is indeed a useful tool in tracking important, global events--a fact now recognized by the Library of Congress.
Currently the Library of Congress holds more than 167 terabytes of web-based information, including legal blogs, websites of candidates for national office, and websites of Members of Congress.
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What a waste.
errrrrrrrrr.......and the purpose of all this is?
Spectacular waste of space, but I do see the idea behind it. Think of it as a cyber time capsule. I would imagine someone in the future will be interested in the admittedly unspectacular things we have floating in pop culture.
167 TB's of website data is impressive...
Twitter... not so much.
Great, useless information (if we can call it that) to annoy future generations in their queries
Tax payer money going into important tweets I'm ok with, now as for those TMI (too much information) ones, it makes no sense. Leave that to social magazines which will do a very good job of archiving "the breakup of Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, and other significant global events." (the way this phrase is written leads to believe the writer thinks that Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy breaking up is significant global event...)
Have they (Library of Congress) created the perfect internet library yet? Have they run out of all existing media to digitize? -- And all they have left is tweets? BTW, what is the current US national debt?
someday ppl will go to that museum of the world's largest archive, and realize how stupid the world was back then ...
Awesome!! they will research on how someone broke up!! errrr.... Cool
Because the world will end in 2012, and they want to leave a monument about humanity (and how stupid it was) for others that find this planet.
This is a load of bull. They want to store the tweets and and sugar coated the news as they are doing the noble thing.
I think it's just a bunch of bureaucrats trying to line their pockets - applying for government funding to do this crap. "The President Tweets -- It MUST be important!"
This is a load of bull. They want to store the tweets and and sugar coated the news as they are doing the noble thing.
This is possibly a noble thing. Once something is on the internet, it can never be fully removed (isn't that one of the laws?). Also, this will give great opportunities to research our culture, why we're so addicted to social networking, and also the evolution of society as a whole, based on the commonpersons thoughts. As long as the information is public and not just horded by the US government I am all in favour of this.
Heard about this yesterday. Talk about worthless effort. But then again, I think many people would consider most of what the Library of Congress archives "worthless". If someones wants to store old Playboy mags, Tweets, Beatles Albums, etc.. that's fine, but when they want to do it with my money, that's a problem.
Historical value my eye. The Library of congress should archive things that would be tragic if lost (i.e. original works of the founding fathers), not something worthless like Tweets. Tweets aren't in danger, they will only disappear when the world stops caring about Twitter anyway, so why bother archiving them once no one cares anymore?
wouldn't it be better to archive the NY times, CNN.com or some other reputable news source than some random internet dude who may be twitering about his sore thumb.
Its going to suck being a historian doing research on our time period.
wouldn't it be better to archive the NY times, CNN.com or some other reputable news source than some random internet dude who may be twitering about his sore thumb.
Hey, that thumb is important, Forget North Korea, They may be on to something here
(Jokes)
Apparently many of you havn't heard of primary documents. Twitter is a history researchers dream come true. As they said, it documents events as they happen and reflects people's reactions to them. Hats off to the Library of Congress for realized what an important resource tweets will be for future generations.
hoarding much??
Saying the breakup of Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy is a significant global event on par with the Haiti earthquake sure minimizes the significance of that crisis.
Have they (Library of Congress) created the perfect internet library yet? Have they run out of all existing media to digitize? -- And all they have left is tweets? BTW, what is the current US national debt?
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Saying the breakup of Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy is a significant global event on par with the Haiti earthquake sure minimizes the significance of that crisis.
Or maximized the significance of Jim and Jen.
Ahahahahhaha! This is almost exactly like the latest Onion News skit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kn_GqbXQgM
except instead of Mr. Year 3000 finding our porn stash, they're going to be reading through countless twitters with stuff like "Woke up, took shit." or "OMG Did u here wut Britney said!?! That slut!"
Poor future Earth people.
1000 years in the future, assuming we haven't killed ourselves off by then, it'll be an interesting way of looking into the past - how we primitives lived.
errrrrrrrrr.......and the purpose of all this is?
Waste taxpayer's money on rubbish.
What a waste.
Seriously...sounds like people are finding any reason to make use of the massive emptiness on there super large data centers ever since 500GB+ hard drives became dirt cheap.
wouldn't it be better to archive the NY times, CNN.com or some other reputable news source than some random internet dude who may be twitering about his sore thumb.
..oh, and the icing on the cake, the BBC. Looking forward to seeing a concise and impartial coverage of contemporary issues that takes into account both sides of the story and never, ever distorts the issue to suit THEIR own agenda. Yes we can.
Anyone else wonder if it's so agencies/companies can use it for data-mining?
Sigh another disgrace......
The sooner the country implodes the quicker this ridiculous crap will be over.
OMG OMG OMG Tiger, Britney, YAY!!! Drools at mouth like sedated moron..
I read the headline and the first thing I said to myself is...
Dumb.
Anyone else wonder if it's so agencies/companies can use it for data-mining?
Absolutely! That is why I stay away from social networking sites.
Also, just in case this forum is archived at the LoC for future generations: James, The Twelve Monkeys had nothing to do with it!
167 terabytes ...
Just that?
I have a 2 TB C: and a 6 TB D:
So the Library of Congress has 20 times the storage capacity of my personal computer. lol.
That would easily fit in a 2-3 RAID NAS cabinet.