useum

[View larger]We recently linked our Facebook fan page status...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:35:00 -0500

[View larger]

We recently linked our Facebook fan page status updates to our Twitter account and have been tweeting every-so-often via Facebook. I was originally concerned that pestering our FB fans with frequent updates would result in un-friending, which may be the case to some extent, but it doesn’t seem too detrimental overall.

The graphic works like this: every status update we created on Facebook is called out, if there is no call out, there’s no Facebook update. The Y-axis is number of fans added/removed. Each call out reveals how many Facebook "likes," comments and tweets (both in the form of @replies and retweets). I’m not sure this reveals much of anything, but it was an interesting exercise.

Questions? Ideas?

When I first came to the Museum of Life and Science, I started...

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:29:19 -0400

When I first came to the Museum of Life and Science, I started an effort to listen and inventory every time I found a Google Alert, Tweetbeep, and various Feed Your Inbox subscriptions through delicious.com/ncmls.

Yesterday I took a look at the links and counted how many we had since I started recording them. There are over 1,800 mentions of the Museum (including press, which comprises 13%). The two high points were coverage of the Prepared Food Tax, and the Dino Trail Blogger Preview/Brontosaurus Beheading.

It’s been a worthwhile activity and I encourage anyone responsible for measuring word of mouth and social media at an institution to consider this sort of inventory process.

See also: Doing Really Neat and Free Things with Google Alerts

Durham’s Decapitated Dino Becomes A Hit Online

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:43:00 -0400

Durham’s Decapitated Dino Becomes A Hit Online:

A write-up and video about the user-generated, online response to our bronto that was vandalized.

We invited our online friends* to a special preview of an...

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:25:22 -0400

We invited our online friends* to a special preview of an exhibit we have opening on Saturday. One of the bloggers, Wayne Sutton, wrote up this great review of the experience and process.

Social Media brings Dinosaurs back to life at the Museum of Life and Science

* Online friends in this instance were twitter users that are local (i.e. the ones we follow back) and people that have blogged about us in the past year. I will be posting more about the online response to this event once I have some solid numbers.

A local news station asks Twitter and Facebook users if...

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:14:00 -0400

A local news station asks Twitter and Facebook users if they’re surprised by the attention a news story about us has been receiving. The facebook page and other sites, tweets, posts, etc. have so far been entirely user-generated. I wonder, though, if folks have the impression that we manage those accounts because we have a presence on the same social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Blogger, etc.)?

"So every time I see another article or an ad about how to acquire more followers on twitter, friends..."

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:08:00 -0400

“So every time I see another article or an ad about how to acquire more followers on twitter, friends on Facebook, or otherwise collect more “souls” for money, fame, or reputation, I start thinking about Chichikov.”

- Collecting dead souls in social media - Boing Boing

Twitter to beta release a “verified” seal for...

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:20:29 -0400

Twitter to beta release a “verified” seal for accounts where impersonation is a considerable risk.

via Twitter Blog: Not Playing Ball

This is a screengrab of recent activity on the Flickr Plant...

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:59:11 -0400

This is a screengrab of recent activity on the Flickr Plant Project. It may be a coincidence or it may be that we’ve reached a certain participation threshold, but we’re getting some actual dialogue and plant-related questioning in our comments, which is exactly what we were looking for.

Museum of Life and Science State of the Web A presentation of...

Wed, 27 May 2009 16:54:00 -0400

Museum of Life and Science State of the Web

A presentation of projects I’ve worked on in my first year as Director of Web Experience at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC. (Visit the slideshow page to see notes that explain each slide.)

Follow-back feedback. See tweets for context: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Wed, 20 May 2009 15:49:00 -0400

Follow-back feedback.

See tweets for context: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

This tag list is simpler and easier to parse than the...

Sun, 10 May 2009 09:46:44 -0400

This tag list is simpler and easier to parse than the traditional cloud tag.

"So maybe instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter,..."

Sun, 10 May 2009 08:02:17 -0400

“So maybe instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need “social media marketing” after all.”

- A Whole Lotta Nothing: This is how Social Media really works

Here are some numbers for the traffic we’ve received to...

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:42:00 -0400

Here are some numbers for the traffic we’ve received to lifeandscience.org since January 2008, pulling out “Web 2.0” referrals (e.g. bloggers and social sites like facebook, youtube, flickr, twitter, etc.) for more detail.

I viewed insights for all of the MunchCam! videos we have on...

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:43:00 -0400

I viewed insights for all of the MunchCam! videos we have on YouTube and took screengrabs of each one that had “Hot Spots” data. I then merged them all in a Photoshop document (use the “Darker” layer effect to have them appear to be on one graph) and added some annotation.

I see a trend of greater than average attention for the first few seconds and a waining attention as the animal continues to munch. I wish we had insights for our Barn Spider munch that has a surprise ending to see if that made any difference.

My first 48 hours at MW2009. (via 10ch)

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:46:11 -0400

My first 48 hours at MW2009. (via 10ch)

A little robot needs the help of intervening pedestrians to...

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:41:55 -0400

A little robot needs the help of intervening pedestrians to traverse a college campus quad.

tweenbots | kacie kinzer

"So if you think about it in this way, you’re sitting in the center of a series of expanding circles..."

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:03:24 -0400

“So if you think about it in this way, you’re sitting in the center of a series of expanding circles of friendship or acquaintanceship with a very small inner core of about 5 best friends, and then there’s a sort of layer outside that which include about 15 people, and another layer outside that of about 50, then you’ve got your 150. As you go down through those layers, the quality of the relationships is declining, but it seems 150 marks a real drop off. Now, there’s at least two other layers we know about beyond that, one at about 500 and one at about 1500. There are suggestions for layers at about 5000 out beyond that, too.”

- The BEAST: America’s Best Fiend

4 Ways Companies Use Twitter for Business - ReadWriteWeb

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:15:14 -0400

4 Ways Companies Use Twitter for Business - ReadWriteWeb

"I know of web teams that have one person per 30,000 pages. I know of web teams that don’t even know..."

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:30:29 -0400

“I know of web teams that have one person per 30,000 pages. I know of web teams that don’t even know how many pages they have. I know of web teams that don’t even know how many websites they have. Is that quality? Is that management?”

- How many webpages can one person manage?

I am beginning to question the accuracy of Qwitter. I use the...

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:53:00 -0400

I am beginning to question the accuracy of Qwitter. I use the service on the @lifeandscience Twitter stream as a way to learn what tweets work better than others.

The above alerts were delivered to my inbox roughly 72 hours after this tweet, “RT #wral meteorologist @nsj: Spring began with the vernal (or spring) equinox at 7:44am. The sun was directly overhead of the equator.”

I have several theories:

1) Reciprocal following retains followers. I wasn’t following any of these people, yet. Our Twitter account gets ~7 new followers a day and I have been remiss lately in going through and following back. One recent unfollower tweeted after her unfollowing that it’s only polite to add followers.

2) As Twitter becomes more ubiquitous, “tweet code” becomes more intimidating. Retweets/RT, #hashtags and @replies may automatically dissuade certain followers. My most recent Qwitter notifications have come after those kinds of tweets.

3) Qwitter’s just broken. Based on the frequency of when I receive Qwitter notifications (rarely and normally in bigger numbers like the screenshot above), it could be that this batch of qwitters was queued from several days or weeks of tweets.

I suspect it’s a combination of at least #1 and #3. I went through each of my recent unfollowers’ Twitter stream to see if they were spammers (they weren’t) and added them to my list of followers to see if that makes a difference. I’ll report back if it does.