Watch that Tweet... Library of Congress Acquires Twitter Archive

Before sending that next tweet... think twice... It will now be preserved for all eternity...

The Library of Congress has announced that is to archive "every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006" and that’s a lot of tweets.


The announcement was made in the most apt way via their own feed @librarycongress which has now over 50,000 followers.

On their blog Matt Raymond writes, "Just a few examples of important tweets in the past few years include the first-ever tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (http://twitter.com/jack/status/20), President Obama’s tweet about winning the 2008 election (http://twitter.com/barackobama/status/992176676), and a set of two tweets from a photojournalist who was arrested in Egypt and then freed because of a series of events set into motion by his use of Twitter (http://twitter.com/jamesbuck/status/786571964) and (http://twitter.com/jamesbuck/status/787167620).

"So if you think the Library of Congress is 'just books,' think of this: The Library has been collecting materials from the web since it began harvesting congressional and presidential campaign websites in 2000. Today we hold more than 167 terabytes of web-based information, including legal blogs, websites of candidates for national office, and websites of Members of Congress. "

You have now been warned...