Library of Congress Stops Archiving Twitter

Way back in 2010, the Library of Congress announced its plan to archive all public messages on Twitter (on Twitter, of course), starting with the very first tweet, the Twitter equivalent of the Gutenberg Bible.

That was then. On December 26, 2017 the Library pulled the plug on Twitter. While preserving a text archive of all tweets from the first 12 years of Twitter (2006-2017), the LoC will be more selective from here on out.

More:

“The Library of Congress Quits Twitter,” Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker

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120-Character Tweets Pile Up In the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress announced its plan to archive all public messages on Twitter in 2010 (on Twitter, of course). The Library has the very first tweet, the Twitter equivalent of the Gutenberg Bible. It preserves Barack Obama’s presidential victory tweet as well as George Washington’s diary.

But Since 2010 the fire hose of tweets has become an endless tsunami, 500 million messages each day. And volume is the least of it. Archiving is not just amassing stuff. The Library has yet to figure out how to make the stuff usable while protecting privacy. And the tweets keep on coming.

More:

“Can Twitter Fit Inside the Library of Congress?” Andrew McGill, The Atlantic

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Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-oiV

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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The Library of Congress Has All Your Tweets. Now What?

The Library of Congress archives all public messages on Twitter. This was announced two years ago (on Twitter, of course). The Library has the very first tweet, the Twitter equivalent of the Gutenberg Bible. It preserves Barack Obama’s presidential victory tweet as well as George Washington’s diary.

Now that the Library has amassed this huge and growing sea of  social media data, it doesn’t know what to do with it. Meanwhile, the tweets keep gushing in.