Twitter to be Archived by the Library of Congress, True Story!

Tweet

For some reason Twitter is about to be archived by the Library of Congress. Just because it sounds pretty weird it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. In fact the Library of Congress has already announced it so from now on, past, present and future tweets will be forever archived.

So let’s say we can understand the need of preserving some very famous tweets which came out of the digital mouths of some very famous people. But do we really need to have everything stored in a single place? Like all the billion of unnecessary tweets we send all they long hoping to be retweeted and/or tweeted back to?

Is the Library of Congress scared that Twitter will lose the whole archive and thus decided to keep a copy of it for themselves? Does the Library of Congress have enough storage space for all the tweets in the world? Will anyone attempt to use the collection for ulterior reasons?

I could go on and on with questions regarding this strange initiative but I’ll doubt that anyone will care to answer them all.

What we do now is that the Library of Congress does that sort of thing; archive stuff. It would archive the whole Internet if it was possible. Nonetheless the Library of Congress has about 167TB of web data collected so far and I’m sure they’re not stopping there.

And what better way for the Library of Congress to announce the move than by sending out a tweet:

Library to acquire ENTIRE Twitter archive — ALL public tweets, ever, since March 2006! Details to follow.

At least I can go to bed now with a clear conscience knowing that all my daily tweets are going to be safely stored in some corner of the Library of Congress. In about one million years from now when human kind will be extinct and other mammals will dominate earth, they will discover the impressive Twitter collection and store it in a similar facility of their own forever wondering what in the hell did I want to say when I told you I hated winter and what it meant to that world that made it record it.

So anyway, faithful readers, do remember to follow our tweets regularly! It will save you a trip to the Library of Congress!