DURHAM – ArchiveSocial has been awarded the mammoth task of archiving President Trump’s social media footprint.

The Durham startup won the contract this week from the National Archives and Records Administration, which is charged with stewardship of federal and presidential records. The deal is valued at around $195,988, according to information posted on the Federal Procurement Data System.

To date, the archive will include 70 Trump administration social media accounts including 58 institutional and individual Twitter accounts. A full list is available from the NARA’s Trump Presidential Library Website.

The @realdonaldtrump account, which was suspended after the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, is not among these. Plans for archiving these tweets haven’t been finalized, according to reports.

WRAL TechWire’s Chantal Allam recently had the chance to find out more from ArchiveSocial’s CEO Ray Carey. Here’s what he had to say:

• Tell us about how ArchiveSocial ended up winning the contract to archive President Trump’s social media footprint?

Just over four years ago founder Anil Chawla traveled to the White House to wrap up the Obama administration with the first social media archive of a presidential administration, and now we are at it again, working with the National Archive and Records Administration on the preservation of these important historical records for the Trump Administration.

Contained in this archive are over 20 terabytes of social media records captured from across the executive branch of government. These records do more than tell the story of the last four years. They tell the story of how our communication with our leaders has evolved, and how we all engage with the conversation and debate that move this country forward.

[One terabyte equals 1,000 gigabytes of data. How big is the Trump social data? The entire Electronics Records Archive says it currently houses “400 terabytes; and we have electronic records from every White House starting with President Ronald Reagan.”]

• Why is it so important to archive politicians tweets these days?

Our system of government is built on trust, and the foundation of trust is clear and transparent communication from our elected officials. For the first time in history, leaders in power are able to directly engage in a two-way dialog with the people they serve.

However, these platforms were built for private citizens who are not routinely subject to public records laws. We are proud to help solve this issue and facilitate the complaint use of social media for over 5,000 of the largest cities, federal agencies and the last two Presidential administrations to some of our smallest municipalities, towns and schools.

• Who did ArchiveSocial beat out to win the contract from the National Archives and Records Agency (NARA)?

I don’t have full insight into the NARA procurement process, but given that we had done the work for the Obama Archives, provide service to several Federal Agencies like the Department of Justice and large scale cities, like New York as well as over 5,000 other local government agencies, I’d like to think we were the natural choice.

We’re unique; there really isn’t another company that has parity with us in the Social Media Archiving for Government space, and that’s why they keep coming back to us. And we don’t just archive historically. We archive for our customers in real-time on these social media platforms – and that means content that is deleted or users who are blocked, we have the data to support our customers making those decisions — to prove why they blocked a user or removed content.

• Will ArchiveSocial be archiving President Trump’s suspended social media accounts?

I’d direct you to NARA for any details regarding the project. [NARA didn’t immediately return a request to comment. President Trump was “permanently suspended” from Twitter in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol Building. The @realDonaldTrump Twitter handle is not listed on NARA’s Trump Library archive. On the website, it said the list will be updated on an “ongoing basis as more accounts are made available for access here.]

• How will archiving Trump’s accounts differ to storing Obama’s?

Well, there are more of them! Joking aside, for any specifics of the project you would have to talk with NARA. [NARA didn’t immediately return a request to comment.]

• Is ArchiveSocial continuing to scale?

Yes, we hired more than 40 people in 2020, most of them fully remote. We now have 90 employees who have been remoting into their downtown Durham location since the pandemic began. We expect to hire more than that this year. In fact I have seven new folks starting Monday.

• Where do you see the trend of archiving social media accounts going forward?

I don’t think the genie is going back into the bottle. I was talking with a school superintendent the other day who exclaimed, “I hate social media!”

I responded, respectfully, “Why are we talking?”

He said, “To reliably get a message out to my students and parents, as they don’t check email or our website, and I don’t have all their cell phone numbers, I need to put it on Facebook or Tweet it to be sure to get the message out.”

We were there to help.

The Archive (really many small Archives) has exploded this year to over 130 million records — up 50 percent year over year.  These networks are powerful tools.  These posts and tweets are creating the record of our public interactions, and I only see it growing from here.