This could be of benefit for a lot of museums using Twitter. Brooklyn Museum reports: “For as long as we’ve had the Brooklyn Museum Twitter account, I’ve been the sole voice behind it, but today we are trying something new.  Ben Hedrington, the developer behind ConnectTweet, has given us the go ahead to alpha test the app that powers the Best Buy Twelpforce, a campaign I’ve long been a fan of.

ConnectTweet acts as a relay and allows allows us to connect staff twitter accounts directly to the main Brooklyn Museum account.  Basically, approved accounts can tweet with a hashtag and then that tweet will relay to @brooklynmuseum and show up via @BK_staffer.”

Read on here.

Some museums have a contest on Twitter. Twitter has published some useful guidelines for running contests:

• Discourage the creation of multiple accounts: If users make lots of accounts in order to enter a contest more than once, they’re liable to get all of their accounts suspended. Please be sure to include a rule stating that anyone found to use multiple accounts to enter will be ineligible.

• Discourage posting the same tweet over and over (and over) again: Posting duplicate, or near duplicate, updates or links is a violation of the Twitter Rules and jeopardizes search quality. Please don’t set rules to encourage lots of duplicate updates (like saying, “whoever retweets this the most wins”). Your contest could cause users to be automatically filtered out of Twitter search. Plus, instead of their followers seeing your cool contest, their followers might start getting annoyed by your contest. You might want to set a clear contest rule stating that multiple entries in a single day will not be accepted.

• Ask users to include an @reply to you in their update so you can see all the entries: When it comes to picking a winner, you’ll want to see all the contestants. If the updates include @username mention to you, you’ll be able to see all the updates in your Mentions timeline (see here for more information on replies and mentions). Just doing a public search may not show every single update, and some contestants may be filtered from search for quality.

• Encourage the use of topics relevant to the contest: You might decide to have users include relevant hashtag topics along with the updates (like #contest or #yourcompanyname). Keep in mind that hashtag topics need to be relevant to the update; encouraging users to add your hashtag to totally unrelated updates might cause them to violate the Twitter Rules.

Do you have some great ideas for contests?

Museums of all shapes and sizes can be found giving people a behind the scenes look at art, history, nature and science through Twitter. Over one million people follow museums on Twitter, what if each of these people told a friend about a museum that they enjoy following?

What if someone who hasn’t visited a museum for years was inspired to engage with art by Twitter? What if more people used Twitter to tell museums what they think about their exhibitions?

For 24 hours we want you to spread the word about museums on Twitter. Just recommend a museum to your followers, or point them to the directory of museums here.

Use hashtag #followamuseum, Original idea by Jim Richardson, Museum Marketing.

(If you are interested in new developments and new media for museums follow museummedia)

The Twitter blog has shared information about a new feature which they are currently testing out called ‘Contributors’, this is aimed at businesses, but I think it could be really beneficial to museums too.This ‘Contributors’ functionality enables multiple users to contribute to one Twitter account, this will help large organisation to keep the conversations that they have in this space authentic by showing the person tweeting on behalf of the museum.

Read more: Could museums benefit from Twitter ‘Contributors’? « Museum Marketing.

Is your museum on this list?

Jim Richardson on his blog: “I have seen a few tools which try and provide useful statistics to show engagement with followers on Twitter, but I haven’t really been convinced, but I think this service from Klout is worth looking at.

Here are some statistics for MoMA Twitter username @MuseumModernArt to wet your appetite:” Read on: Museum Marketing. Visit Klout.

We know there are a lot of interesting and unique uses for Twitter. We’ve seen Twitter used for customer service, tweets to monitor power usage, and even 140 character marriage proposals, but we never thought about it being used to quickly respond to incidents such as a kid being bit by an otter.

Earlier today, a group of Twitter enthusiasts (including me) gathered at the San Francisco Zoo for a zoo tweetup. While in most respect it was your standard gathering of Twitter nerds with phones tweeting and Twitpics flying, the tweetup was unique because of the involvement of the zoo via Twitter. Read more…

Here are some interesting possibilities to check out! On Mashable ADAM OSTROW writes: “We’ve already covered how viral the chat options on live video services like Ustream, Justin.tv, and Tinychat can be.By signing into these services with your Twitter Twitter, Facebook Facebook, or MySpace MySpace credentials and then having your messages broadcast as status updates, more users become aware of the video feed and its audience can grow exponentially.Ustream ustream just taken this concept to another level by launching what it calls Social Stream. The new feature allows you to sign-in to all three networks simultaneously, plus AIM aim, and have each chat message distributed to all of them. Further, the chat room will contain messages streaming in from all four platforms.”

Read more: Ustream Pairs Live Video With Simultaneous Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace Chat.

The Internet is overflowing with resources for art historians and art scholars, and as an online student, you’re probably encouraged to tap into all of the blogs, galleries, image collections and study materials found online. But if you want a constant stream of art discussion, news and artist profiles for the sake of your own research and passion, follow these 100 excellent Twitter feeds for art scholars: 100 Excellent Twitter Feeds for Art Scholars.

http://twitter.com/museummedia 800 followers! Thanks a lot, and we do our best to tweet usefull things!

Download an audio file of Sarah Darwin talking to Michael Reiss about her work and about her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin. Listen here: Sarah Darwin interview. Follow Sarah on the Clipper Stad Amsterdam for an epic voyage around the world via Twitter!

The Stad Amsterdam clipper is recreating the Beagle voyage. On board will be Sarah Darwin, Charles Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter, who will give her account of this Dutch expedition on Twitter. On the first of September, 2009, the beautiful clipper will depart from Plymouth, U.K. and follow Darwin’s route when he was aboard HMS Beagle. Read more…

Museums following Museummedia on Twitter is updated!

We inserted a list of museums following museummedia on Twitter:

list of museums following museummedia

Twitteren is in. Veel musea sturen regelmatig mooie tweets de wereld in. Maar heeft het effect? Komen er meer bezoekers? Vergroot het de naamsbekendheid? Straalt het misschien dynamiek en jeugdigheid uit?

Geef je mening op ons forum…