US Library of Congress to archive all Twitter messages since site's launch

* All public tweets archived * Tweet numbers "in the billions" * Includes first tweet by co-founder

THE US Library of Congress said today it plans to digitally archive all of the billions of messages known as "tweets" sent on Twitter since its launch four years ago.

www.news.com.au...
glad i did not get caught up in the "tweets" information gathering at its best just like myspace,facebook,bebo.

This was the plan from the start.

Sensed it when I saw the MSM force Twitter down our collective throat last year.

Everything you ever wrote online (private or not) will exist forever.

Imagine the power of that blackmail when applied to our youth of today "all grown up" tomorrow.

Damn got there before me

I am torn in regards to this. I can understand where everyone will be like "holy crap, invasion of privacy" but is it really an invasion?

It is your choice to publically state what you are doing at any given time and what your opinion is on the latest celebrity break up because you think the world cares about what you are up to.

You make that data publically available and so is the library of congress.

Can you delete tweets? Are those still given to the library? That would be more of a grey area.

What I am shocked about, however, is that the library considers twitter to be such a cultural revolution and databank of useful information that it wants to archive it.

Majority of tweets are people te-tweeting blog articles or explaining what they had for dinner. Why does a library (which should be a hotbed of knowledge) really need that?

TWITTER has more than 105 million registered users and the hot micro-blogging service is adding 300,000 new accounts a day.

www.news.com.au...
thats alot of information to be held and thats now

What, and you guys thought that the yottabyte was a fake?
Yottabyte Storage Facility

Why do you think they want to store all that information.
Surely!
To store the vast amount of information captured from typing every, single, solitary, key stroke on a users keyboard.

This will not be good.

(which is exactly why I don't have any social networking accounts besides ATS)

Originally posted by havok
What, and you guys thought that the yottabyte was a fake?
Yottabyte Storage Facility

Why do you think they want to store all that information.
Surely!
To store the vast amount of information captured from typing every, single, solitary, key stroke on a users keyboard.

This will not be good.

(which is exactly why I don't have any social networking accounts besides ATS)

thanks for the link

Yaaaaaay er maybe not.
Imagine, all the stupid things that get tweeted, saved for all time for all to read...and as already mentioned, used against you.

I can imagine a corporation looking to hire a youth straight out of college, 'well, your scores look promissing, but we are concerened about your opinions you made in tweets a few years ago"

Oh...joy be...imagine keeping record and being accountable for the stupid things we say.
I say stupid things everyday...

reply to post by CYRAX


Anytime.
The thing is, this amount of storage is massive.
So why any business, gov't or otherwise would need such a large amount...
Remains to be explained.


Love the avatar, btw. Sektor was my other personal favorite.
Best costume ever! FTW!

The government has no business archiving such information.

If private firms want to do that, more power to them. However, the government's job is to protect our civil rights, not record everything we say.

The government is criminal on its face.

This data can be used in many ways. As computers become more powerful they will be able to do more research in smaller times. Won't it be amazing if you threw all this humongous "social" data on a super computer with the question "how can people be manipulated". It would analyze all those messages an understand human behavior to its deepest roots.

This data serves as the digital form of humans, and you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see the huge psychological nature of it.

What right do they have to do this? I don't fully understand Twitter, but I thought the only people who can see your messages are those whom you allow?

Okay, I'll be the odd ball in saying this is a great idea and I am very glad to hear someone thought of it and is moving to protect something like Twitters data as an archive of national historic importance. That represents everything from the totally absurd to the inappropriately intimate thoughts to the items so mundane people sighed just to see it was sent. Talk about as true a picture of the daily life of general, ordinary people that has ever really existed in such a format.

I'd also noticed Twitter was strong in mentioning this archiving and transfer to the Library of Congress doesn't include the private stuff. That is probably accurate too... It's a pretty straight foward stuffy bunch in that little corner of Government. I couldn't think of a better bunch of people to keep such records...

Besides, the people anyone would want to worry about already captured this AND all the private ones in near-real time using Echelon and other programs I'm sure we won't even hear the names of for years to come. Why look at the doom side, when the historic value is simply incalculable. Think... 100-200 years from now..or MUCH longer.. How valuable would WE find it to have such a massive record of 'life'...for the Roman Empire, or Greece..or many other periods.

Finally Government does something I can really feel good about.