A while ago I started to record my ‘tweets’ into an archive I own: mecorder.com, based on ThinkUp. The though behind this is I found myself posting most of my ideas and thoughts to twitter, but could not effectively trace back those awesome links and tweet.
ThinkUp is actually a tool to give you insight into your online conversations. So not only does it record your tweets and facebook posts, but it also adds the conversation with others to the mix. That way you can search and see what the conversation was, long after the tool you used has gone. So, at least it’s a handy little tool, but also very insightful.
Obviously ‘mecorder’ is a combination of ‘me’ and ‘recorder’. That would be the ultimate goal: to record my online presence, as well as the cloud around my ‘posts’. In the first case just to have a place my ‘public mental notes’ can live indefinitely, but also for it to have meaning, even if it was in the most insignificant way.
Value over time
I believe all content has it’s value, not only in the present, but also as part of a timeline from yesterday into the future. In that respect we are building a history of small seemingly insignificant pings, that hopefully come together to a symphony of some beauty.
Call me a sentimental historian, born in the body of a creator. I just like to make my content to last, in whatever form it needs.
Ownership
However, the most important reason to start recording my ‘tweets’ is to own the content I make, including the scribbles and time dependent nonsense I frequently post. Because as one is using ‘services’ like flickr, twitter, facebook, you hand over ‘you’, or parts of you, in tiny little increments.
When these services have gone (and all of them will pass), a significant part of you will be gone, for ever, even for you, the creator. Effectively you are not the owner of your own thoughts, how ever insignificant you think they might be at this time.
This thought made me record my tweets, to analyze, search upon (did you know twitter only makes the 3200 most recent tweets available to you?) and to once in a while re-read, just for giggles and fun.