Library of Congress to permanently archive Twitter posts

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).

Footballers and their Tweeting

On a less serious note, i was personally interested in this article because it pertains to professional football, or soccer, players throughout the world who account their experiences on Twitter. This article explains of many pro-soccer players like Steven Gerrard, Didier Drogba, Darren Bent, Cristiano Ronaldo, and many more having Twitters and funny stories that come out of them.
Most of these stories are explaining how players release private club information, which is obviously stupid and a threat to their clubs privacy.
In some cases such as Darren Bent, an England international, he Tweets with fans for their questions and even debating in some banter throughout his messages. He says he Tweets around 50 times a day but really has to be careful of what he releases.
I think it is hysterical how these new craves are handled by professional soccer players. But im sure soccer doesn't have the only athletes that create controversy through these new sites.

Twitter Politics

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27464.html

Everyone has heard of Twitter, but now people in Congress are using it too. In terms of Twitter, Republicans are far ahead of the game, with twice the number of Republicans with Twitter accounts than Democrats and nearly four times the tweets. Most notably, Senator John McCain has the most subscribers on his Twitter, making you wonder whether Democrats should step up their twittering and up their grass-root movements. Twitter seems to be a good way to be transparent to the people and help rally people by getting closer.

The article notes that people who use Twitter are more likely to lean left, and that this demographic doesn't seem to help the Republicans, however this will probably sway many people toward the right. Democrats better pick up the pace and start those tweets. A new age of campaigning has begun.

-Weilu Jia