Twitter's general counsel, Alex MacGillivray:

""This project however is not about us, it is about our users and the fact they use the service to chronicle these amazing events. President Obama actually tweeted after he was elected. That is a big deal and it's something he did.

"It is not something we imagined when we were forming the service," Mr MacGillivray told BBC News."

"As a historian you will be able to look back at that and understand what people felt. The same with the healthcare legislation that recently passed. You can look back and say what where people talking about and have those views changed over time? We think that will be really useful.""

This will be a fantastic resource for journalism and communication scholars.

Del.ici.us tags: twitter archive web history