Archiving Tweets

Twitter has made it all the way to the Library of Congress!

According to the library of congress blog, your tweets will now be archived in the Library of Congress. Every tweet since the beginning of twitter history (March 2006) will be archived digitally and housed in the infamous Library of Congress.  These tweets will be made public.

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. It  receives copies of every book, pamphlet, map, print, and piece of music registered in the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States and serves as a research tool to congress and the public.

According to the Twitter Blog: "Today, fifty-five million tweets a day are sent to Twitter and that number is climbing sharply."

Why are our tweets going to Congress?

“Tweets and other short-form updates create a history of commentary that can provide valuable insights into what’s happened and how people have reacted,” wrote Dylan Casey, Google’s product manager for real-time search.

Our tweets are seen as a time-line of history that have recorded important world event such as the presidential election of Obama, and the earthquake in Haiti. The Library of Congress believes that are tweets can have a large contribution to history.

Also in twitter news: Google has created a wonderful new way to revisit tweets related to historic events.

You didn't think that the Library of Congress was going to take the whole cake did you?

It's called Google Replay.

"Since we first introduced real-time search last December, we’ve added content from MySpace, Facebook and Buzz, expanded to 40 languages and added a top links feature to help you find the most relevant content shared on updates services like Twitter. Today, we’re introducing a new feature to help you search and explore the public archive of tweets", says Dylan Casey, Product Manager for Real-Time Search.

with this "search engine" you can recount any subject that has been tweeted about in the past. Currently, you can only search back a couple of months, but soon you will be able to go back all the way to the beginning of tweeting time.  


How do you feel about your tweets going public?