Tag Archives: Library of Congress

All public Tweets will be archived at the Library of Congress & on Google

Fellow Twitterers, your Tweets are about to become part of United States history.  On Wednesday Twitter announced it will be donating access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress “for preservation and research.”  Every 140-character public Tweet made since 2006 will find a home next to the Declaration of Independence.  According to Twitter founder Biz Stone, “only after a six-month delay can the Tweets will be used for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation.”  Can you believe it?  A digital archive of Tweets.  Future tweens will get a glimpse into our world dominated by pop sensation Justin Bieber and they’ll think he was king.  All joking aside, Twitter has functioned as a virtual space where breaking news of births, deaths, tragedies, and triumphs have spread across the globe, and future generations will be able to see how we utilized social networking to quickly disseminate information and share experiences with one another.  Pretty profound if you ask me.

In related news, Stone announced a partnership with Google, introducing a new service called Google Replay.  Replay “lets you relive a real time search from specific moments in time” with Tweets.  In addition to viewing Tweets in an archived digital database at the Library of Congress, Replay is another “new way to revisit tweets related to historic events.”  Right now the service only goes back a few months, but Stone promises it will eventually be able to access Tweets since Twitter’s inception in 2006.  Google is rolling out the feature right now, and it will be made available globally within the next few weeks.  For now, Google Replay can be accessed here.  Try it out!  Search a specific keyword and experience how events relating to it unraveled in time with Tweets.

[Via TwitterBlog; GoogleBlog]