TFPL, Consultant
According to this BBC article, The Library of Congress is set to archive every Tweet that has ever been and every Tweet there ever will be. In effect, this is an attempt to preserve the [social] historical context around world events (i.e.) what people were saying, for example:
- before and after Barrack Obama was elected as US president in 2008;
- the drama around the Iranian elections of 2009 as it was unfolding;
- or in reaction to the earthquake disaster of 2010 in Haiti.
Twitter is a popular micro-blogging service, which allows users to post their thoughts on anything in no more than 140 characters; the number of users is well in excess of 60 million and ever growing and there are reportedly up to 55 million "Tweets" per day. My first reaction to this news, given that number, was to wish any future historian luck in finding any gems amongst all the drivel. But... I then remembered the clever search mechanism built into Twitter ("hashtags") and Google's hand in enhancing search in Twitter is apparently also being utilised by The Library of Congress.
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