The primary sources being made available in Google Realtime are Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, and Google Buzz.
2. Google Replay (Archive Search) and How Far Back Does the Archive Go (As of Today)?
The only source that can be searched using the Google Replay tool is Twitter. As of today (this will change) the archive only dates back to February, 2010. So, the depth of the Twitter archive (Google Replay) has NOT changed since the product first launched as an experiment back in April of this year. However, plans to provide a complete Twitter archive back to 9:50pm on March 21, 2006 continue to move forward.
This is important to keep an eye (as are other companies gathering Tweets over time) on terms of expansion. Why? As we mentioned multiple times back in April, the much discussed Library of Congress Twitter Archive WILL NOT be accessible on the web and even when you visit LC in Washington, DC it will NOT BE accessible to the general public.
The Library of Congress Twitter Archive WILL BE accessible to Library of Congress staff for internal use only; for non-commercial research by qualified and credentialed researchers — those terms still need to be defined, as mentioned earlier — and for limited public display by LC. Finally, LC can do preservation work with the Twitter tweets.
UPDATE (8/30/2010): We've learned from the Library of Congress that they're still deciding the definition of what credentials, beyond a reader ID card, a person would need to access the archive. Also, as we said in earlier posts some curated portions of Twitter archive will likely be accessible on the Internet but it still needs to be decided if the Twitter Archive will be accessible on the web.
BOTTOM LINE: All of the decisions that need to be made are still up in the air.
3. Timestamp
The timestamp associated with each post is the local time where the searcher is located as they search.
Notes
It's worth pointing out again that Topsy.com announced on Wednesday that their archive of Tweets now dates back to May, 2008.
Unlike most retrieval systems, Topsy organizes its search index in real-time, while still maintaining a long-term history.
One positive for Topsy is the advanced search page offering a number of options along with several pieces of syntax available to help a Twitter searcher.
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