Ever had a case of the *tipsy tweets*?

You know what I'm talking about. The type of tweets you'd never post to Twitter sober but that seem highly amusing after a couple of alcoholic beverages. The ones you rush to delete on Monday morning in a coffee-induced panic when you remember what or who you tweeted. Yeah those. 

Well, the next time your fingertip hovers over the send button after you've had a few, you might want to think twice about letting it make contact with the keyboard. 

The Announcement

The news came in mid April, first via the Library of Congress's own Twitter account and then via public announcement during Twitter's first Chirp conference for developers. This was followed up by blog posts from both the Library and Twitter.

So why the interest in digitally archiving tweets and is it really necessary? Staff at the Library of Congress think so:

"Twitter is part of the historical record of communication, news reporting, and social trends - all of which complement the Library's existing cultural heritage collections.  It is a direct record of important events such as the 2008 U.S. presidential election or the *Green Revolution* in Iran. It also serves as a news feed with minute-by-minute headlines from major news sources such as Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. At the same time, it is a platform for citizen journalism with many significant events being first reported by eyewitnesse," says Matt Raymond, the Library of Congress's Director of Communications.

"Individually tweets might seem insignificant, but viewed in the aggregate, they can be a resource for future generations to understand life in the 21st century."

Now before you panic about your entire Twitter history being laid bare to a grubby public, you should know that there are some protections in place.

Twitter has insisted there be at least a six-month window between the original date of a tweet and its date of availability for internal library use, non-commercial research, public display and preservation by the Library of Congress. Private account information and deleted tweets will not be part of the archive. Neither will linked information such as pictures and URLs.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington also doesn't see a problem with it:

"I think folks understand that whatever they post on Twitter is meant to be searchable", says their senior counsel John Verdi.

"I don't see a big issue here."

That might change, he says, if the US government tried to identify individuals through their tweets or by cross checking user tweets with their information from other federal databases.

Personally, I can see this happening unless further protections are put in place. It's probably happening every day.

It's important to note that the Library did not purchase the archive. It was gifted from Twitter and the originallegal document outlining the donation is publicly available via PDF.

"Recently, the Library of Congress signaled to us that the public tweets we have all been creating over the years are important and worthy of preservation. Since Twitter began, billions of tweets have been created", says Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in their official blog post about the donation.

"Today, fifty-five million tweets a day are sent to Twitter and that number is climbing sharply. A tiny percentage of accounts are protected but most of these tweets are created with the intent that they will be publicly available. Over the years, tweets have become part of significant global events around the world - from historic elections to devastating disasters."

"It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research."

The Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States and it is the largest library in the world, regularly researched by government staff, law enforcement agencies, law firms, authors, scholars, scientists, students and academics. The Library receives more than 1.75 million readers and visitors annually and employs a staff of more than 3,600. According to Twitter, it's a logical home for their archive.

So with billions of tweets added to the federal archive, how can we expect the data to be used? With Twitter's entire history archived, it shouldn't be long before we see tweets being used as evidence in criminal trials and various lawsuits.

Tweets have already been cited in defamation cases such as the one between 25 year-old Chicago resident Amanda Bonnen and her landlord, Horizon Group Management LLC. Following a disagreement with Horizon Group about mold allegedly found in her apartment, Bonnen posted on her public Twitter account:

"Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay", to which Horizon Group responded with a defamation case to the tune of USD 50,000.

Although a Google-cache of her now deactivated account shows she had just 17 followers, Horizon claimed Bonnen's tweet severely damaged their good name because it was published "worldwide". Ironically, the publicity the case received probably did more damage to Horizon's public image than Bonnen's limited tweet. The case was thrown out due to lack of specific context in the tweet, but it does set an interesting precedent for other potential cases.

Whatever the legal and privacy implications, knowing your tweets are being preserved for historical significance and stored in the same building as priceless documents like the Declaration of Independence, should be somewhat humbling.

Who knows, future generations may one day point to your "OMG you guys! @justinbieber just walked into @starbucks!" tweet with the same awe reserved for George Washington's copy of the US Constitution.

  

 

 

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FAQ 2: How can we use RSS feeds for SEO?

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Hi Kalena,

We are developing a site using Joomla. The site is all about to show latest news i.e. the News Portal. But we don't know how other sites are showing news on their news portal. How can we use RSS feed of other sites to show news on own News Portal and how can we used for SEO?

Thanks, Sameer

Hi Sameer,

Using an RSS feed (or even a number of them) on your site can be a simple and effective way to get new and dynamic content.  In some cases you may have some control over the content in the feed (by specifying a keyword in a Google news feed for example), so this can be perfect for providing content about a particular niche or topic area.  In most cases however you will be dependant on the content of the feed, so you would need to choose which feeds to use fairly carefully to ensure that they are relevant to your site, and your site visitors.

Fortunately, the addition of an RSS feed to your site is pretty straightforward - particularly under Joomla, as there are a bunch of extensions already available for you to choose from.  Try a Google search for "Joomla RSS" or simply check out this link for Joomla RSS Readers and you will find plenty to choose from.  Many of these will do the job for you, some will have more features than others, so just browse through them until you find one that meets your specific needs.

From an SEO perspective, simply adding a feed or two to your site may not help you a great deal - because although the content may be keyword targeted and relevant to your site, it is still essentially duplicate content.  You could consider getting a bit smarter about the feeds you use though.  Using tools like Yahoo Pipes you can gather feeds from multiple sources, manipulate them, merge them, reorder them, and generate your own customised feed, which. when displayed on your site, may be considered new content by the search spiders.

Andy Henderson
Ireckon Web Marketing

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Hello Kalena,

I have a question regarding Google Adwords.

In one specific ad group I have a keyword that receives a lot of impressions and a low amount of clicks. It is a general keyword but one we don't want to miss out on. I have it set for phrase match (the keyword is 'wire cutters'). I want to be able to manage it by using negative keywords.

I do have a lot of negatives set up already, but I suspect there are more I could be using because 'wire cutters' can be used in so many applications. We have a website for a very specific niche market.

My question then is this: is there a way to see what keywords/phrases were searched on triggering an impression for my ad but not a click?

Hi Jackie,

As you are no doubt aware (but for the sake of our other readers) "phrase matched" keywords will allow your Ads to be potentially displayed for any searches which include the specific keyword phrase. Negative keywords allow you to block your Ads from showing if specific keywords are include in the search.

So for example if you have "wire cutters" as a keyword phrase, with the negative keywords "-cheap" and "-UK", then your Ads could be displayed for searches of "jewellery wire cutters",  "wire cutters USA", "Australian Wire Cutters Jewellery", but NOT for searches such as "cheap wire cutters" or "wire cutters UK".

Negative Keywords

Using negative keywords can be a very effective way to prevent your Ads from being displayed (impressions) for searches that are unlikely to lead to sales, and at the same time improve your click through rate (and probably quality score).  However, as you have pointed out, there could be a huge list of negative keywords that may be relevant, and identifying them all can be difficult.    Unfortunately I am not aware of a simple way that you could identify keywords that give you impressions, but don't result in clicks.  It seems like a reasonable requirement, and perhaps one of the existing Adwords reports may be able to provide this, but off the top of my head I'm not aware of any that provide what you need.  If any readers have a suggestion, please add a comment below.

Extend Target Keywords

Rather than increasing the negative keywords, you may like to consider extending your target keyword phrases by including niche specific keywords rather than general ones (this could be the best option if your niche is very specific as you have suggested).  You may also like to change the wording of your Ads to make them much more relevant to your niche. This is likely to improve your conversion rate per click, but won't reduce your impressions, and will probably also reduce your click through rate (and possibly quality score).

Andy Henderson
Ireckon Web Marketing

 

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FAQ 4:  Will my foreign language site be considered duplicate content? 

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