http://cac.ophony.org/2010/04/16/archiving-tweets/
I was brought about reading this article for my history class and thought it was very interesting because historians are thinking of archiving every single tweet that is put out for the public to see. Now some may say this sounds ridiculous because there are a number of things people say that are useless. However, if this goes through there will be a large library with tweets stating everyones thoughts,actions and feelings. Though I am not a member of the twitter community, I think that archiving these tweets may in fact some way serve its purpose, whether it be that people in the future can tap into our thoughts that will be history or that perhaps someone tweeting now is saying something that will make them famous when they are older or well after they have passed. With this developing idea there also comes a question of privacy. What happens to those who do not want their thoughts saved for people to see in the future? Does this in fact go against privacy policy? In my opinion I believe that once something on a public service site is opened by an individual it is no longer as private as one may think. You may be able to make it private but for that mili second, who knows your tweet could be saved. It is difficult to establish how people will react to this situation. It is not yet determined whether people have a choice or not whether they can have their tweets saved but we will just have to see when the uproar begins.
I remember hearing about this on the news, and I could not help but laugh out loud, and shake my head (No pun intended) :). I personally, do not have a Twitter account, but I am a Facebook user (Shout out to social networking!!). I don’t really understand how Twitter works, but to my understanding, it is a site that allows you to “follow” other people and see how they live their lives, then give immediate feedback in 140 characters or less. Whether it be users announcing or tweeting that they have just dealt with the arduous task of brushing their teeth at 10 a.m, or had an internal conflict (now made external?) with deciding what color to wear for the day people now know what and when you are completing these tasks and how you felt doing them. With that being said, I also do think the idea of knowing what projects an idol or your favorite musician are working on is intensively cool!
However, the same unneeded and wanted information that I’m pretty sure floods Twitter on a regular basis will be saved for historians of the future to look at and JUDGE my generation (-__-). The thought that future generations (such as my children) can be amused at what we THOUGHT was an accomplishment…so worthy that we posted it on the internet for everyone to see; and a follower #co-signed the idea infuriates me. It also makes me feel said ‘tweeters’ are very obnoxious with not much intellect, and now I am unfortunately doomed to be affiliated with that behavior. THANK YOU 🙁
i actually heard about this recently as well. at first i wasn’t sure to what to think, then i was angry about this huge invasion of my privacy, but then i realized if i put it out there, then obviously i couldn’t care all that much about it. it was a thought that i’d put out on the internet where nothing is forgotten. however, i kind of think it’s highly unrealistic to archive all tweet, ever. twitter gets flooded constantly and becomes inaccessible at least a handful of times daily when everyone and their mother decides to tweet. why exactly would the Library on Congress want to spend money to digitally archive all those tweets? most of which are nonsense? I mean looking at the article, the author says that about 50 billion tweets are submitted daily. historians plan to archive all tweets from 2006 to present. kind of ridiculous? aren’t there other things they could be doing with that money or efforts? alot of these public tweet s as i previously mentions are nonsense. i’m willing to bet that half of them hold absolutely no relevance to the times or even ourselves, especially considering i sure as hell know i don’t tweet anything of importance. my dogs lack of good behavior helps no one, my convos with my friends over twitter, are kinda lame and lets be honest, unless you’re a celebrity, most of your tweets go unseen. so i repeat, what exactly is the point? and why does the Library of Congress think that our meager tweets are worth archiving?