[I wrote this post several days ago, but didn’t get round to publishing it. Apologies if everyone is bored of the whole issue by now!]
With the recent (and much discussed!) news that the Library of Congress had acquired the Twitter archives, I have one question (well, several actually, but we’ll stick with this one for now): will this change the way you tweet?
Tweets are ephemera. Now, ephemera is considered an extremely valuable historical/social research tool, but one of the prerequisites of ephemera is that it is not intended for preservation. What happens now when it is?
Nothing. Probably. We’ll forget about it. The way we forget about cctv and those guys in the golf balls on the Yorkshire moors who read all our emails.
But – for the first few days, at least – will you try to add a little extra insight, a little extra pizzazz for the sake of future readers? Will you take this as your chance to influence how history remembers you? To be the guy who had that really funny and insightful tweet about the leaders debate or the Iceland volcano? To be quoted in a future thesis or book?
Do the Twitter archives hold potential future value for researchers? Will tweets have a chance at immortality? Of course. But the thing about future researchers – as everyone who has had to think about collection/acquisition policies will know – is that we have no idea what they will find valuable. So while you’re trying to wow posterity with your political acumen and elegant turn of phrase, it might be the person who tweets what they have for their lunch every day who ends up as the cornerstone of ‘Sandwiches as an economic force: an exploration of working lunch habits in the early 21st century’.
Being remembered by history is still a lottery, but Twitter and the LoC may just have given you a few free tickets…
Bethan's information professional blog 
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April 19, 2010 at 11:22 am
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April 19, 2010 at 11:27 am
Marieke
Hi Beth,
This is a discussion we were having a while back as part of the JISC PoWR (Preservation of Web Resources) project.
Have a look at a search for related posts:
Twitter
Lots of discussion on why you might want to preserve posts, how you can preserve posts and what the implications of this are.
Thanks
Marieke
April 19, 2010 at 11:37 am
bethan
That’s really interesting! Thanks Marieke 🙂
April 19, 2010 at 11:51 am
Gary Green
I wonder if the fact that people know that they have a huge audience of potential listeners/followers on Twitter has made them change the way that they present themselves already on the internet, regardless of whether their Tweets were going to be kept or not? I know I modify the way I talk based on what I’m using to communicate (talking face to face, email, Twitter) and when I’m talking to different people I talk in different ways and I wonder if other people do the same?
April 19, 2010 at 1:30 pm
bethan
oh, I’m sure it does have an effect on how people present themselves! Although I suppose that for a newer generation of web users (I’m talking in terms of take-up date, not age), having your web presence public/searchable is the norm, and they expect to have to tailor their online personality accordingly.
It’s certainly an interesting issue! It would be interesting to see if people who are more used to a ‘public’ web presence (such as twitter) indulge in fewer of the negative internet behaviours such as flaming on forums etc.
April 19, 2010 at 11:57 am
Gary Green
In response to Marieke’s comment, Twapperkeeper is another way of archiving Tweets. As an aside, I had some brief thoughts on my blog about classifying tweets/tying in with library catalogues using Twapperkeeper after the LoC announcement too.