The Twitter Potential

I have officially joined the ranks of twitter as of yesterday afternoon. Up until a few days before that, I didn't realize that it had a web presence, I honestly thought it was just a cell phone thing. Anyhow, one of the things online that I follow faithfully is the Museum listserv and a topic started on Thursday involved John McCain's twittering about pork in the Omnibus bill (I will have a totally different post about this perhaps tomorrow evening). I actually spent time in researching if it was really John McCain tweeting or a fake one, after all there was an article a few weeks ago discussing celebrity posers, so I was skeptical. There was also the thought running in the back of my mind that during the campaign he didn't know how to use email, so how could he possibly use twitter? My research came up with the following conclusion: John McCain twitters with help. I'll accept that, but if he was using twitter, why wasn't I?

So I joined twitter as a way to expand my online presence and awareness, to be primarily used in conjunction with this blog. So there will be tweets alerting to new blog posts and some that sum up blog posts in 140 characters or less, but in a short amount of time, I realized how twitter will allow me to do much more than that.

I began following numerous museums that are using twitter to update their followers on new exhibits, different events and museum specific news. Many of these museums follow each other too. I have been introduced to museums that I didn't know of and thus I have been spending a good portion of my Saturday looking at these museums' homepages. I would love to go on a huge road trip to visit many of them.

Not only am I following museums, I am following museum professionals, museum studies students and all around museum enthusiasts, including other museum bloggers. It is a great way to meet new people, forge contacts and just stay connected to others with like interests. I find people so interesting and I like to network and learn from those who know more than I do. Above and beyond following someone's tweets, I've seen twitter used to find roommates for museum conferences, plan gatherings, and have short and succinct conversations. I am also pleased to see that there are many my age who are interested in entering the museum world for their careers.

The first step is for museums to get out there and tweet, then following like institutions. Soon others will begin to follow the newly twittering museum. I think a crucial step lies in making the statement that the museum is now on twitter, whether that announcement comes on the museum website, via an email newsletter, or even posted (albeit with small signs) around admission desks or at the museum store. I don't know if I'd think to search twitter for a single institution if I didn't know that there would be a positive result, searching for the keyword museum and rolling from there has proved successful enough. The point is though, that tweets can only reach those that are following them and these numbers are far lower than some attendance numbers, so why not reach as many people as possible?

In conclusion I love the connectedness that I get off of twitter, because it is so much easier I feel to find other people with similar interests. It is also something that is easy to do, which means that museums and other cultural institutions can cheaply utilize it, and if utilized properly I think that this is a great virtual expansion of a museum's reach. It's already starting to happen, and I only see this going further as more museums catch on and decide to tweet along with the rest of us.

Hello to anyone who found me through twitter and thanks for visiting!