Library of Congress Is Not Sure What to Do with its Archive of Tweets

If Twitter is sitting on a goldmine of data, someone needs to create a better method of digging it up. The Library of Congress was given access to the entire firehose of tweets in 2010, but researchers at the institution are still scratching their heads over how to organize and display the collection, which currently totals 170 billion tweets dating back to 2006.

If Twitter is sitting on a goldmine of data, someone needs to create a better method of digging it up.  The Library of Congress was given access to the entire firehose of tweets in 2010, but researchers at the institution are still scratching their heads over how to organize and display the collection, which currently totals 170 billion tweets dating back to 2006.

Deputy librarian of congress Robert Dizard Jr. told the Washington Post:

“People expect fully indexed — if not online searchable — databases, and that’s very difficult to apply to massive digital databases in real time.

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