Q&A with @MuseumModernArt (aka Victor Samra), part one

Along with the Getty and the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art has been an early, aggressive user of Twitter, the micro-semi-blogging service that enables fast, easy, often smart conversation between, well, anyone. (For more on what Twitter is, click here.) Given that Twitter seems made for people who want to communicate with audiences, be they museums or journalists, I've been exploring ways of using the thing.

My three favorite museum feeds are the Getty's (1,380 followers), Brooklyn's (2,246) and MoMA's (2,453). The Getty does the best job of tweeting art, Brooklyn does the best job of being the friendly museum you want to watch the game with, and MoMA does a nice job of understanding that art doesn't begin and end on West 53rd Street. There are lots of other good museum feeds, including from the Heard, the Tacoma Art Museum and more. (And no one tweets better than NHL teams and staff. The best source for hockey news/etc. is Twitter.)

The human behind the Museum of Modern Art's popular Twitter feed is Victor Samra, MoMA's digital media marketing manager. Last week he and I talked about why the heck... (I'll post part two this afternoon.)

MAN: Why tweet? Why use Twitter? What does the museum get out of it?

Victor Samra: One thing we really wanted to do was reach directly out to our audience, to people who love the MoMA, to people in New York City who know we're here but may not think about coming in too regularly, to not depend on other media outlets. And to just be available, to have the door open and to be able to foster real discussion and conversation between us and our audience. You'll read this a lot in a lot of the discussions about museums, but it's really about putting a face on the institution. And I think that putting just a human touch behind the place, especially online where it is all electronic is useful. You know, just give it a personality.

MAN: What do you want it to be, or to become?

VS: We just started in early November, so it's still new. We're watching it grow every day. One thing is the idea of being a direct link to the museum where anyone can ask a question or contact us more directly than calling the information desk. I think one of the most important uses for it is listening, listening to what people are saying. It may not be people who are following our Twitter account, but through searches I can see what people are tweeting about about the museum, if they're waiting in line or if they love certain exhibitions. One guy tweeted about our Café 2 and how much he loved it and he took pictures and put them up on Flickr. Same guy, he had a little stuffed monkey and he put the monkey in different positions around the museum and showed this monkey's trip to the museum. People loved it. Half of it is getting instant feedback. I'm not stalking anybody but you can listen in on what people are saying. I think corporations are really using Twitter for that too.

MAN: So what corporations do you follow? Do you learn from them? It's such a new tool -- or at least it is to me -- that I check out a bunch of different feeds to see how all kinds of people use it. So far journos, uh, well, uh...

VS: I pay attention somewhat to certain corporations really just to see what's being done out there. I've been paying attention to a lot of digital media strategists, Steve Rubel, who I think is at Edelman... I've just been learning a lot about him. He has a lot of great insight about what works. He doesn't focus on non-profits -- his clients are usually corporations. The CEO from Zappos was one of the first CEOs on Twitter. When it comes to nonprofits I pay more attention to museums, theaters and foundations, orchestras too. Sometimes artists themselves, photographers, painters. There are a lot of literary Twitterers out there.

Click here for part two.