Library of Congress to Digitally Archive ALL Twitter Posts

So the Library of Congress just got the rights to archive every single public “Tweet” made on the social media service “Twitter.” Besides the obvious privacy implications we have to wonder why our tax dollars are going towards archiving what Ashton Kutcher had for lunch last Monday. Here’s the news from the Library of Congress Blog:

“Every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. That’s a LOT of tweets, by the way: Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, with the total numbering in the billions…

Just a few examples of important tweets in the past few years include the first-ever tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorse (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)...

…We also operate the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program www.digitalpreservation.gov, which is pursuing a national strategy to collect, preserve and make available significant digital content, especially information that is created in digital form only, for current and future generations.”

Big Brother is watching