Weighing the worth of Twitter

In the worthiness spectrum of information, how would you rate Twitter? It’s obviously becoming a somewhat popular way of communicating, but is it a medium for mostly inconsequential rabbiting or something more than that?

The Library of Congress (LOC) recently announced that it will be archiving all public tweets, from the beginning of the thing way back in March 2006. At the least, that’s billions and billions of the little buggers, with many trillions to come.

As the repository of the American experience, it makes sense for the LOC to do some of this. There already have been some important tweets that rate preserving and, as Twitter becomes embedded in the social milieu, there’ll be many more.

One of the outcomes of this move will, presumably, be the developments of innovative ways to mine this data. Twitter, in its own announcement, said that Google has already created “a wonderful new way to revisit tweets related to historic events.”

(Of course it has! Come on, world, does no one else out there have any imagination anymore?)

On the other hand, what are we to make of the recent memo out of the Office of Management and Budget that said much social media communication doesn’t rank as anything to worry about under the Paperwork Reduction Act?

I know that doesn’t necessarily imply that communications sent through government Twitter channels aren’t important, but it does come across as a devaluation of sorts of the worthiness of the medium. Do use it as part of your Open Government plans but, hey, it’s really no big deal.

So, which is it? Is Twitter a potential gold mine worthy of existing alongside all of the other important stuff in the LOC? Or, in that spectrum, a relative lightweight?

David Ferriero, the National Archivist, congratulated the LOC on its acquisition and said the only reason his outfit didn’t acquire the Twitter archive is because tweets aren’t considered government records, though some agency tweets could be. Twitter isn’t for everyone, he said, but “I do think that we need to recognize the potential power of the mundane details of our lives and what they might say about our culture.”