That's Twittertainment! - The Twitter phenomenon and how museums are using it

 

After months and months of resistance, yesterday I signed up to Twitter. I can’t really say why I’ve been put off the site for so long. A Facebook keen-bean, I suppose I couldn’t really see the point of a site whose entire attraction is simply a watered-down version of a Facebook status update.

There’s also the question of the ever growing Twitter lexicon: tweet, twittering, twitterati and, even here in the French office, “tweeter” the verb “to tweet” – je tweete, tu tweetes, il/est tweete... It’s not that it gets on my nerves, more that I find it quite alarming and possibly all a little intimidating.

For those who remain in the un-twittering zone as I did yesterday, Twitter is the simplest of social networks. You create a username, you get a home page. You get a box which asks you what you are doing and you duly type in a response, known as a “tweet”. This is published on your page for everyone to see. You can search other “twitterers” and follow their responses and comment on them. That’s about it.

For any cultural institutions looking to use Twitter, its brilliance lies in this simplicity. Unlike a Facebook page with photos, videos and all manner of fluff, it takes truly minimal effort to post a sentence with what you’re doing on Twitter. The New York Times ran a piece on Twitter in which the writer describes how a judge asked his Twitter followers if a certain project had been tried before. In just 15 seconds, his Twitter followers had provided him with links to all the relevant information he needed.

For both museums and visitors, Twitter has the ability to enhance everything. Like with Facebook, museums can post links to exhibitions and visitors can respond. But unlike Facebook, Twitter can be easily used during exhibitions or talks. The speaker speaks and the audience tweets – all in real time. And it’s completely free. For example, over on Museum 3.0, Maria Gilbert from the Getty has posted about how, during a talk by light and space artist Robert Irwin at the Getty Centre, employees tweeted with links to relevant online Irwin-related resources and listeners tweeted with comments. All this activity was then collated into a special Twitter feed where others could access all the information and reaction later. Molly Flatt from 1000heads did the same during a talk she gave to a group of “geek girl” bloggers and it’s something we are definitely looking into here for the Communicating the Museum conference in June.

For an excellent post about how museums should be using Twitter, read Nina Simon’s “An open letter to Museums on Twitter.” Elsewhere in the blogosphere, there is an important warning for all museums on the Museum Branding Blog. Whether they want to use Twitter or not, it is imperative that museums at least sign up for usernames now before their name is taken, such is the speed of the Twitter explosion.

Meanwhile, the Facebook/Twitter debate continues. It’s undoubtedly best to be on as many social networks as possible to insure increased visibility. But in terms of efficacity for museums, it seems Twitter has the edge: just take a look at Brooklyn Museum which has 7,223 fans on Facebook and 21,331 followers on Twitter....

(Find us on Twitter! - @agenda_paris..............Find me on Twitter! - @elishkaflint)