FailWhale did not make it into the OED (Photo credit: lauterthanbombs)

For all the talk of multi-million dollar valuations, one to one interactions, and a steadfast refusal to speculate about a flotation, Twitter finally has something that could impress even the most technophobic grandparent. 'Tweet' is now an official word, and is included in the Oxford English Dictionary.

It joins flash mob, fiscal cliff, and dad dancing in the English language dictionary, an academic piece of work that is always being updated and revised.

What's of more interest to me is the process for removing a word from the OED... there isn't one. As Sarah Ogilvie explained to The Guardian "...If a word gets into the OED, it never leaves. If it becomes obsolete, we put a dagger beside it, but it never leaves."

As scholars settle into their chairs in another one hundred and twenty nine years, the presence of 'tweet' might be the only thing left from our voracious appetite for online communications on a transient medium.

The same is not true of day to day language, and that is reflected in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. To get into that dictionary, you need to have the editorial team take out another word. Recent relegations that have been lost from regular use include cassette player, S-VHS, and the millennium bug, all of which are very much part of recent technological history.

That feels more in Twitter's nature, a short and transitory moment in time where people pay attention to the tweet, before it disappears down the rabbit hole. But the effect of those forgettable messages can be huge and everlasting. That's why, much as it might seem a bit of a joke to 'rush' the new definition of 'tweet' into service, it makes perfect sense.

When Twitter disappears in the near future, and it will, the impact from countless 140 character long messages will continue to reverberate through culture.

Congratulations Twitter, you've changed the world. It's a very small contribution, but no matter what happens to the social network and messaging service over the next few years, there will forever be a piece of paper that explains what a tweet is for.