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Why the Library of Congress is wrong to archive Twitter

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Re: Why the Library of Congress is wrong to archive Twitter

#11

Post by davewiner »

esonderegger wrote: post #10

Who says the Library of Congress isn't archiving the open web? http://www.loc.gov/webarchiving/faq.html Specifically, it states: The types of sites archived include, but are not limited to: United States government (federal, state, district, local), foreign government, candidates for political office, political commentary, political parties, media, religious organizations, support groups, tributes and memorials, advo…

Did you miss the note?

http://scripting.com/stories/2012/07/17/whyTheLocArchivingTw...

"(Note: I mean bloggers. The equivalent content that's on Twitter, but not in a corporate blogging silo.)"

Re: Why the Library of Congress is wrong to archive Twitter

#12

Post by wtvanhest »

davewiner wrote: post #9
VLM wrote: post #8

Core assumption is there is some business advantage in having LoC archive. Not sure I agree. Much more fun is to use an analogy. LoC will arbitrarily by their own high level decision only and exclusively archive ABC TV shows, NBC, CBS, etc, too bad. Or perhaps if they only archived Ford corporate materials and ignore GM and all others.

Well there certainly is a business advantage. Or why would Twitter have done it, and done a big rollout of the deal (I believe it was at SXSW). It was a huge publicity bonanza, the message was that Twitter is Historic. Don't believe us, believe the Library of Congress. They didn't do it out of altruism, they did it because it was excellent publicity. (Probably the LOC did it for that reason too.) And we have a say in…

Well there certainly is a business advantage. Or why would Twitter have done it, and done a big rollout of the deal

You cannot assume companies always act logically. In this case they could have agreed to it just because it was "cool".

They didn't do it out of altruism, they did it because it was excellent publicity.

This is probably accurate, but it doesn't give them a long term advantage. It probably gave them a small boost in marketing (I say small because I have never heard about this). Marketing doesn't hold up without investment. (for those of you who say iconic brands will hold up, keep in mind that every iconic brand advertises constantly.)

Further, the government arbitrarily "subsidizes" businesses constantly. In many cases much more so than Twitter. I agree that any subsidy (whether monetary or otherwise) should be examined, but in this case it seems to be a complete nonissue to me.

Re: Why the Library of Congress is wrong to archive Twitter

#13

Post by danso »

I don't really get it. LoC also archives commercial content that was, at some point, closed off to non-payers.

As for why Twitter and not your average blogger...well...because there's a specific endpoint to get all the tweets, each of which is a discrete, well-defined object. Finding all the blogs on the Internet is likely not as easy.

Re: Why the Library of Congress is wrong to archive Twitter

#14

Post by Camillo »

davewiner wrote: post #9
VLM wrote: post #8

Core assumption is there is some business advantage in having LoC archive. Not sure I agree. Much more fun is to use an analogy. LoC will arbitrarily by their own high level decision only and exclusively archive ABC TV shows, NBC, CBS, etc, too bad. Or perhaps if they only archived Ford corporate materials and ignore GM and all others.

Well there certainly is a business advantage. Or why would Twitter have done it, and done a big rollout of the deal (I believe it was at SXSW). It was a huge publicity bonanza, the message was that Twitter is Historic. Don't believe us, believe the Library of Congress. They didn't do it out of altruism, they did it because it was excellent publicity. (Probably the LOC did it for that reason too.) And we have a say in…

I don't know, to me it says that Twitter is small. How big is it in Libraries of Congress? Less than one!

Re: Why the Library of Congress is wrong to archive Twitter

#15

Post by scott_s »

davewiner wrote: post #11
esonderegger wrote: post #10

Who says the Library of Congress isn't archiving the open web? http://www.loc.gov/webarchiving/faq.html Specifically, it states: The types of sites archived include, but are not limited to: United States government (federal, state, district, local), foreign government, candidates for political office, political commentary, political parties, media, religious organizations, support groups, tributes and memorials, advo…

Did you miss the note? http://scripting.com/stories/2012/07/17/whyTheLocArchivingTw... "(Note: I mean bloggers. The equivalent content that's on Twitter, but not in a corporate blogging silo.)"

Did you miss the last word of his quote?

Re: Why the Library of Congress is wrong to archive Twitter

#16

Post by sp332 »

LoC archives Twitter because only LoC can archive Twitter. Other projects, notably the Internet Archive, already archive open web sites including blogs. But IA doesn't have a hope of archiving Twitter. LoC arranged this because if they didn't, no one would have a Twitter archive.

Re: Why the Library of Congress is wrong to archive Twitter

#19

Post by Retric »

quesera wrote: post #3
drx wrote: post #2

All of his arguments boil down to "open web good, twitter bad, ergo LoC shouldn't archive twitter".

Disingenuous. He said "twitter private, Library of Congress public. Public preference to one of several private corps not in public interest, especially when there is a larger, more archive-worthy corpus that doesn't require private APIs or vendor discrimination". Which part of that do you disagree with?

I would assume they would want to do both. The advantage to using Twitter is it copy's a wider range of conversation AND it's easy. Set it up and add some server-space and be done with it, where to even start on blogs would require 10x the effort and even more space.

Re: Why the Library of Congress is wrong to archive Twitter

#20

Post by eli »

davewiner wrote: post #9
VLM wrote: post #8

Core assumption is there is some business advantage in having LoC archive. Not sure I agree. Much more fun is to use an analogy. LoC will arbitrarily by their own high level decision only and exclusively archive ABC TV shows, NBC, CBS, etc, too bad. Or perhaps if they only archived Ford corporate materials and ignore GM and all others.

Well there certainly is a business advantage. Or why would Twitter have done it, and done a big rollout of the deal (I believe it was at SXSW). It was a huge publicity bonanza, the message was that Twitter is Historic. Don't believe us, believe the Library of Congress. They didn't do it out of altruism, they did it because it was excellent publicity. (Probably the LOC did it for that reason too.) And we have a say in…

Sure, it's great PR. I'd love to be able to put out a press release with my name and LoC on it.

But you really think it is affecting users' actions now months later? I'd be surprised if anyone considers LoC archiving a feature that keeps them locked into Twitter instead of starting a blog. (Notwithstanding LoC's efforts to archive all sorts of digital content... you make it sound like Twitter is an outlier.)

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