Google lets you replay Twitter

In case reading tweets once wasn't enough, you can now go back and replay them, using a new search tool from Google.

Google's Replay lets users search through the public archive of Twitter, viewing the messages themselves or tracking them in a handy chart.

The tool will roll out in the next few days, but a preview is available here. Initially, it will only cover the past few months back to February, but will eventually include the billions of messages all the way back to the very first tweet in March 2006.

"Tweets and other short-form updates create a history of commentary that can provide valuable insights into what's happened and how people have reacted," explained Casey.

Archived

Forget writing a novel. Now there's a new way to get your words into the US Library of Congress collection. The prestigious library will be preserving all public tweets for posterity, after Twitter donated its archive.

Tweets will only be included after they've been live for six months, so if you post something stupid, you do have a bit of time to smarten up and take it down.

The "tiny" percentage that are protected by passwords won't be included, but the rest - billions of messages - will be, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone who said "most of these tweets are created with the intent that they will be publicly available," in a blog post.

"It's very exciting that tweets are becoming part of history," Stone said.

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