Social media grew out of the idea that friends should be able to connect with friends and share their interests over the internet. They could let them know what they’ve been doing, post photos, share links, etc. It was all about letting your friends know about something that excited you.

“The new Brad Mehldau album is killing.”
“Matrix 3 blows.”
“Check out these cute kittens: www.youtube……”
“New photos from vacation.”

These are all things that the sharer finds exciting and suspects will be interesting to his/her friends otherwise they would never be shared. It’s basically e-word-of-mouth. Instead of gathering around the bubbler to talk about the latest episode of Twin Peaks, people are discussing the latest episode of Lost on web-forums, Facebook, and Twitter. In both cases, it’s the stimulating content and not the discussion platform that inspires viewers to engage.

Institutions (museums, orchestras, non-profit arts organizations, etc. ) all have good content… somewhere. They need to make sure that the content can be easily shared. To me, an institution’s ideal Twitter presence wouldn’t include them writing any tweets or even having a Twitter account. The presence would consist of tweets by people who found their content, got excited about it, and shared it with their friends. I know I will definitely check out everything that my friends send me, whereas I might not check out everything that a museum tweets. A museum will say that everything it does is awesome – they’re trying to sell you something. If I’m shopping for something online I’ll probably read the product description but I’m definitely going to read the user reviews. A user review tells me the truth. It’s unbiased. Is this hard drive going to crash in a month? Does this TV actually look like cross-processed film (i.e. do the colors blow)?  These are the types of questions that are answered by reading user reviews. A museum tweeting is merely a museum tooting its own horn – it’s a product description. My friend’s act of tweeting/posting/sharing is like a positive user review on a product.

So how does the institution get involved in the “conversation?” By supplying the content driving the conversation. If the content interesting, clear, relevant, and accessible to the visitor and if the visitor feels like s/he “discovered” it, s/he will want to share it. Should a museum tweet or post on Facebook? I guess so, but only to provide access to content and not because they feel like they should or because everyone else is doing it. Twitter is what’s hot right now but next year it will be something else. Focus should be on the content, not the technology.