Web Design

Real-time tweeting from 150 years ago

I recently rolled out a new site feature on 69thNewYork.com, a site I maintain for a local non-profit.  It sends out at least one tweet every day 1861 (150 years ago).  The headlines of the day were dominated by the American Civil War, which had begun earlier that year.

To make this feature work, I used a Drupal multi-site installation and created a new custom content type for the "tweets," with a scheduler so I can set up tweets ahead of time.   I then used a reblogging service to automatically propagate the tweets to Twitter and Facebook.  You can also grab the raw rss feed (for those who still do such things).

The result is a microblog that lets you get a real sense of the war as an immediate thing with an uncertain end.  This is mainly for educational and informational purposes, but also a demonstration of how you can make the past come alive with Web 2.0.