Library of Congress has amassed 170 billion tweets
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Library of Congress says it's amassed about 170 billion tweets since it began collecting an archive of all Twitter messages in 2010.
Twitter is donating its archive to the library, going back to the first one posted in 2006.
Library Director of Communications Gayle Osterberg wrote in a blog post Friday that the volume of tweets it receives has grown from 140 million daily in February 2011 to nearly half a billion tweets each day in late 2012.
Librarians have been developing a system to preserve and organize the collection. Now the library is shifting its focus to handle the technical challenges of making such a massive archive available to researchers.
The library may work with a private partner to provide access because its own search technology is slow.
Twitter is donating its archive to the library, going back to the first one posted in 2006.
Library Director of Communications Gayle Osterberg wrote in a blog post Friday that the volume of tweets it receives has grown from 140 million daily in February 2011 to nearly half a billion tweets each day in late 2012.
Librarians have been developing a system to preserve and organize the collection. Now the library is shifting its focus to handle the technical challenges of making such a massive archive available to researchers.
The library may work with a private partner to provide access because its own search technology is slow.
In the world of data collection and analysis, this is a treasure trove! Â So much can be forecasted, observed, measured, etc... from tweets, as insignificant as they may seem. Â Consider a million tweets all clustered during a certain time of the day, emphasizing something specific. Â That alone can say so much. Â For example, you can deduce sentiment.Â
YAY!! Several pictures of my meals are now archived in the Library of Congress!! People of the future will be stunned and amazed at the evidence of a 20th-century, middle-aged broad's eating habits!! >8-)
This seems like a waste of time and space.
 @robmo And we're probably paying for it as well.
Archiving *all* Twitter messages? Â Wow - I can see archiving "notable" accounts, but [@]Jerz3yGurl4EVAR's tweets probably won't have a lasting impact on the summation of human knowledge or the greater experience.
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 @wsmith_84 Not only the messages, but the indirect data from tweets, such as time, date, volume, frequency, 3M's in stats - measures of centrality, is also worthwhile.  There's a lot of information here...Â
 @31F except, not all information is relevant.
 @31F You are correct.
 @Robinsnest Ah yes, but even a NULL hypothesis is information in itself