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Ironfield
15th April 2010, 04:30 AM
US Library of Congress to archive all messages sent on Twitter

From the telegraph.co.uk:

The US Library of Congress has announced plans to digitally archive all the billions of messages sent on Twitter since its launch four years ago.

Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, has seen a lot of work by small businesses which act of Twitter feeds from customers.
"Library to acquire ENTIRE Twitter archive – ALL public tweets, ever, since March 2006!" the world's largest library, based in Washington, announced in a message on its Twitter account.

"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," Matt Raymond of the Library of Congress added in a blog post.

Mr Raymond highlighted the "scholarly and research implications" of acquiring the micro-blogging service's archive.

He said the messages being archived include the first-ever "tweet," sent by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, and the one that ran on Barack Obama's Twitter feed when he was elected president.

"Just setting up my twttr," Dorsey wrote on March 21, 2006.

President Obama told his Twitter followers on November 5, 2008, a day after his historic presidential win: "We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you."

Mr Raymond said the move is part of the library's effort to preserve "significant digital content" for future generations.

The Library of Congress houses millions of books, recordings, photographs, manuscripts and maps.

And from twitters own privacy policy we have the following:

Twitter Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes Twitter's policies and procedures on the collection, use and disclosure of your information. Twitter receives your information through our various web sites, SMS, APIs, services and third-parties ("Services"). When using any of our Services you consent to the collection, transfer, manipulation, storage, disclosure and other uses of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. Irrespective of which country that you reside in or create information from, your information may be used by Twitter in the United States or any other country where Twitter operates.

Glad I never got caught up in this craze.

-Ironfield