Marking Twitter Safe for Historians
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Enamored as I am of Twitter, I wonder about the long-term availability of
the System. The business model might run its course  or be overtaken by 
others offering the same service. People might grow tired of posting to or 
reading it.
 
Twitter's ephemeral—and increasingly blasé—form may make you question the
utility of preserving all that content. Years from now, will anyone care what 
you were eating for breakfast? Yet in the decades, centuries, and millennia to
come, it will be _exactly_ these everyday, pointless details that will be of 
most interest to the historian. Wouldn't you want to read what people would 
have Twittered about (had the service been around) 50, 500, or 5000 years ago?
 
I for one want my children's children to be able to read what my friends and I
have posted there, regardless of the accessibility or even existence of 
http://twitter.com.
 
Aviary is a step in that direction. How will you repurpose your tweets and 
save them for the future?
 
MJA
Kyoto, 2007