The Library of Congress announced Wednesday on its Twitter account that it will acquire the full history of Twitter messages dating back to March 2006. People are wondering what the Library and its users might do with the information. The creation of a Twitter archive will become useful for academic purposes. People will be able to do research about how news is broken, how quickly information spreads durig major world events, and how public sentiment on various topics change over time. As the Library of Congress' blogger says, "I'm no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data. And I'm certain we'll learn things that none of us now can even possibly conceive."
...Great. Does this mean I have to watch what I tweet from now on? I think it's cool that the Library of Congress is interested in gathering all the Twitter "messages" which I can only assume that they are talking about tweets. Who knew Twitter would become so popular. Twitter is actually a useful website ...if you know how to use it correctly, that is. News is leaked faster on Twitter than any other website. I find out more information on Twitter than I could from reading a newspaper. Twitter accounts such as @BreakingNews make it easier to know what is going on with the world in short and simple tweets. Because you can access Twitter from your phone as well, it makes reading the news a whole lot easier. If you don't know what Twitter is, think Facebook but only status updates (with 140 characters or less).
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
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3 comments:
I've always said this and I will continue to say it, twitter sucks. It is literally a fraction of what facebook has to offer, AND it has only a fraction of the users. However, with twitter getting all of this attention, I'm sure people will be more likely to get a Twitter purely based on the fact that their words will now make it to the archives of the LoC. Good for Twitter to be inching its way up in the digital world, but really? the Loc? really?
why would the library even consider keeping tiwtter posts.. im never on twitter so there is nothing important to keep in the library
i think both seth and devin (despite the fact that i assume his comment to be facetious), are missing the point. archiving all twitter comments will greatly allow us to look back at how fast news spreads among different demographics, when and why people tweet, why certain news travels faster than others, what grabs people's attention, etc. harnessing that kind of information will probably prove to be highly beneficial in the long run by aiding the speed at which and how news is distributed and announced.
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