Saw this story yesterday about NASA’s popular Mars Phoenix Lander Twitter feed.
“When NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory News Services manager Veronica McGregor was tasked with delivering word of the agency’s first-ever robotic landing on Mars during a holiday weekend, she turned to the social-networking website.
Readership and viewership in traditional news media usually goes down over a three-day weekend,” said McGregor, a former CNN correspondent.”
McGregor created a distinctive Twitter persona for the Lander and the number of followers skyrocketed to over 39,000.
“The Lander’s writing style helped the blog stand out, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.
“It was the way she chose to send out the updates — in the first person and anthropomorphizing the Lander — that really made all of the difference,” Stone said. “As a result, NASA gets a level of engagement with citizens they didn’t have before.”
Pleased with the Phoenix Lander’s Twitter success, NASA plans on adding more Twitter feeds for future agency missions.
