Around the Net
Is Twitter A Record Of Our Time?
- The Next Web, Wednesday, December 7, 2011 12:20 PM
One man’s mindless Twitter babble is another man’s historical footprint. Falling into the latter camp, the Library of Congress is pursuing an initiative with Twitter to record the communication “of our time,” through an archive of tweets from the service. Last year, the library revealed that an agreement with Twitter had given it access to every public tweet ever sent on the service, The Next Web reports.
Yet, “News of the archive initially received a mix response, with many concerned that information on a social network would be placed on record,” TNW writes. Bill Lefurgy, digital initiatives program manager at the library, promises that program has no such ulterior motives. “We were excited to be involved with acquiring the Twitter archives because it’s a unique record of our time,” Lefurgy said. “It’s also a unique way of communication.”
The Library isn’t the only US institution that is paying close attention to what you tweet. As it recently reported, the U.S. government has a digital team, which reads 5 million tweets per day for intelligence purposes.
