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Every public tweet since Twitter's inception in March 2006 will be acquired and archived digitally by the U.S Library of Congress, according to announcements made today. The Library has been harvesting data from the web since 2000 and currently holds "more than 167 terabytes of web-based information, including legal blogs, websites of candidates for national office, and websites of Members of Congress".

While an official press release has not been issued yet, the Library says "[e]xpect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition", in a blog post. The Library chose to make its first mention of the acquisition via its official Twitter account @librarycongress.

Updates:  UPDATED Apr 19, 2010 9:14 AM PST
Why the Library of Congress cares about archiving our tweets Ars Technica, Apr.18.2010

Related topics: Web