TMCnet News

Tweets Now in Library of Congress
[April 15, 2010]

Tweets Now in Library of Congress


TMCnet Contributing Editor
 

In the words of noted social philosopher John McEnroe, you cannot be serious.

On the other hand, this is Congress we're talking about.

The New York Times is reporting that the U.S. Library of Congress announced - through its official Twitter account, natch - that "it will be acquiring the entire archive of Twitter messages back through March 2006."



The addition of Twitter "could foster an enormous amount of academic research," the Times writes, conjuring up some of the ghastliest images of research hell imaginable. The Times suggests that it's "an unprecedented opportunity for discovering patterns of social interaction." As if we want to remember our culture via tweets.

Or as CNN puts it, "What was the Twitterverse's reaction to the Lehman Brothers (News - Alert) collapse? President Obama's election? Now you won't have to wonder.


Naturally there are questions surrounding the move, other than simply "Why?" As the Times notes, "will the archive include friend/follower connection data? Will it be usable for commercial purposes? Will there be a Web interface for searching it, and will that change the face of Twitter search for good?"

And of course, the question on everybody's mind: "Is there any way that the much larger archive of Facebook (News - Alert) data could be submitted to the same body for analysis of the same kind?"

There's a career guaranteed to send a research assistant shivering in a corner playing with his lips - sifting through the oceans of dreck on Facebook.

CNN reports that Google (News - Alert) announced plans on Wednesday to give users access to Twitter's entire archive, allowing people to 'zoom to any point in time and 'replay' what people were saying publicly about a topic on Twitter.'

'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,' said Dylan Casey, Google's product manager for real-time search, in a blog post.


David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David's articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.

Edited by Patrick Barnard

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]