Motherboard

I’ve always viewed Twitter as a place where, after becoming bored with Facebook, I can go to read about the often inane details of others lives. On the occasions when I log onto my personal twitter account , I’m usually less than interested in what my friends find twitter-worthy. It’s usually a hodgepodge of party promoters repping their questionable club nights, people I halfway know name dropping semi-celebrities (I’m pretty sure they’re not really friends with those people), and, most frequently, my twitter “friends” recounting, in exacting detail, every delicious thing they’ve eaten throughout their day. It occurs to me that perhaps I’ve just got the wrong (boring) kind of twitter friends. I’ve heard that following stand-up comedians is a better way to get actual enjoyment from your “Friends Timeline.”

But while I might find tweet reading to be less than stimulating, it seems the U.S. Library of Congress is taking twitter a bit more seriously. The Library recently announced (via their Twitter account, of course) that they will be acquiring Twitter’s entire archive from March 2006 onward.

Few details on the endeavor are available as of yet, but it seems the ways in which this information could be used are endless. Although the archive will certainly serve important academic and sociological purposes, it seems likely that the cache could easily be appropriated for commercial market research as well.

Marketers using social media data to focus advertisements is nothing new, we’ve all grown accustomed to seeing personalized ads on our Facebook pages, but a government archive of four years worth of musings, pictures, and detailed sandwich descriptions would be something on a much grander scale than your profile and search-generated ads. The announcement raises many important questions about the use and impact of this archive, including the who owns a Tweet quandary. One question I find especially troubling is: With what degree of utter confusion will Bieber Fever be viewed by future generation?

The announcement does specify that the library will only be archiving public tweets. So if you don’t want your great-grandchildren reading about your Saturday night antics and subsequent Sunday brunch (so wasted right now! mimosas! spinach omelet!) then I’d go ahead and switch that profile to private.