Library of Congress Acquires the Twitter Archives and All Your Embarrassing Tweets

Wow, Melissa, good point!! That is truly food for thought!

Exactly--and hopefully, that circumspection will even have the added benefit of more civility on the Internet.

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).

The Library does archive other digital/web content:
http://www.loc.gov/webarchiving/

This is a nice reminder to people that anything you put out there onto the Internet has the possibility of sticking around forever. Speak as if your words will be archived in the LoC...

Christy

@morethanmommy

If they have a FB page, people complain that it's a waste of taxpayer dollars. If they didn't have a FB page, people would complain that they're out of touch with reality and the way people communicate/seek information :-)

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).

I think it would be cool if you could use that time stamp feature to look up an exact moment in time well in the future. Look to see what people said on April 15, 2010 at 1:10 p.m., for instance.

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).

Geez Louise!!!! the Library of Congress has a Facebook Page
Let's think about this for a second.......Our tax dollars are paying someone to run a Facebook Page!!!! I wonder if they have a Cafe a Farm and a Mafia too LOL
blackjack ( http://www.discoverygarden.org/ )
roulette ( http://www.chinabags.org/ )

has been archived in various ways since the beginning, so this is nothing that means a big change to me. It seems a little odd that the LoC is saving tweets and not other digital conversation and publication from the Internet. Maybe it's because the time stamping that accompanies a tweet makes it especially useful as research material.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer CE ( http://www.blogher.com/blog/virginia-debolt ) | Web Teacher ( http://www.webteacher.ws/ ) | First 50 Words ( http://first50.wordpress.com )

Why creepy? What about it makes you feel uneasy?

I figured that if it was public in the first place and everyone could read it the first time around, it makes no difference if people are going to read it ten years from now--especially if I am circumspect and never tweet anything I think I might regret (though who knows how former tweets will turn around and bite me in the ass in the future).

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).

It really doesn't bother me! I've got nothing to hide...although I find it kinda creepy that they'd do this.

~Bianca~

Bianca is the writer behind South Bay Rants n Raves ( http://southbayrantsnraves.wordpress.com/ )

That's the beauty of infinite space--that archiving what I ate for lunch today is entirely possible.

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).

Wait, you can't get an archive of your own tweets if you keep scrolling all the way back to your first tweet?

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).

Psych students in the future will have a field day picking apart a person's inner thoughts via their archived Twitter stream.

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).

I don't know if people are more worried or more excited to think that something they've written on their cell phone is in the LOC.

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).

Making reminders for myself around the house: Think Before You Tweet.

Look Before You Cross the Tweet?

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).

Is there enough space in cyberspace to even do that? And I thought it was bad enough to be collecting everyone's embarrassing language mishaps on www.upyourbottom.com ( http://www.upyourbottom.com ) !

francesca maggi
burntbythetuscansun

C'mon Twitter, indeed!

@FireMom ( http://twitter.com/FireMom ) from Stop, Drop and Blog ( http://stopdropandblog.com ) and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land ( http://thechroniclesofmunchkinland.com )

I'm fine with this, but would be even more fine if I could actually get an archive of my own Tweets for MYSELF.

C'mon Twitter...if you can do this for the LOC, you can certainly provide that information for the rest of us. Sheesh.

--- Genie, The Inadvertent Gardener ( http://www.theinadvertentgardener.com )

I'm still trying to recover from when my friend posted all of our Gchats on his blog in a feature called 'Gchats with Kelly'

I wasn't mad so much as horrified by how my conversations never strayed far from food, needing to lose weight, and dating debacles.

Do we really want the aliens finding our Tweets centuries from now??

Saving the World One Fat Ass at a Time!

www.jellykean.wordpress.com ( http://www.jellykean.wordpress.com/ )

And where will the funding come from in 10 to 30 years to access these archives and make sure they are still available? Libraries - even LoC - have culling policies so they can decide what is worth keeping and what isn't. We have already lost books, pamphlets, microfiche, sound recordings of all types, movies recordings, electronic data, etc.

As someone who has been a professional librarian I often get into arguments with my geekier husband about this issue. Really, most people have nothing whatsoever to worry about.

MLO / Melissa

Books, Movies, Games, Ovarian Cancer, and Life in General at http://www.mloknitting.com/

*Singing* Oh be careful little fingers what you type!

Jen

Mama 2 Quadruplets

www.murraycrew.blogspot.com ( http://www.murraycrew.blogspot.com/ )

Probably won't change a thing. Just because it's there, doesn't mean anyone will ever read it. And even if they do read my inane, slightly warped tweets, so what?
I am who I am, here or there, it's all the same...

I think the difference will come from the idea that you can't go back and delete things from your timeline (or delete your whole account) and know that the whole thing has disappeared. Is someone interested in my account? Probably not. But still, it's strange to think of your words still living on out there.

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).