Putting aside for a moment the question of whether cultural institutions should or, for that matter, need to have a presence on social networks and media sharing sites, I decided to take a look at how some of the early adopters are beginning to use them already. For the purpose of this case study I chose Flickr and art museums, which seemed like a natural pairing. If there were one social network that I would expect art museums to be on, it would be Flickr, simply because they deal in the visual medium and an image sharing site and community would probably be an attentive and enthusiastic audience for their content.
I took a look at the Flickr presence of three prominent NYC museums: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the Brooklyn Museum, and decided to grade each one. You may be surprised to see who earns the best marks.
The Met:
The Met has a group page that isn't very active. There are only 67 members, 4 discussion posts and 509 images in the pool. The group was created 10 months ago but the earliest discussion topic dates back to only 6 weeks ago--I'm not sure what took them so long to get the conversation going.
On the Met's personal profile the scene is hardly any better. The bio reads stiff and impersonal and is peppered with links to the museum's homepage, calendar and exhibitions listings but neglects to point visitors to the museum's other social media presence (I know they at least have a Twitter account, and likely a Facebook fan page or YouTube channel). They've got a measely 86 "contacts" or friends and I wonder if they've ever interacted with any of them, and are only part of two public groups, one being the Met's own group and the other being the Brooklyn Museum's. Meanwhile, the photostream contains a sparse collection of party pics but no art.
To be fair, the museum does seem to maintain another group dedicated specifically to the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, which is only moderately more successful with 98 members, 5 discussions and 1,593 items. But, for comparisons sake, the user-driven group Metropolitan Museum of Art has more members and photos than both of the Met's own groups combined with 397 members and 3,258 items. Here, users interact with one another, comment on each other's submissions and answer one other's questions, generally doing all the things the museum should be doing with its own groups to engage their audience. Where is the Met in these discussions?
Grade: D+
It's nice that they've taken the initiative to set up these groups and profiles, but they need to actively use them and interact with their fans by leaving testimonials or commenting on exemplary pictures uploaded to the photo stream. They should also take the time to monitor fan-generated groups, particularly ones that are more successful than their own.
Note: So, I was originally planning to examine all three museums in the same post, but this has gotten kind of lengthy and since I tend to write late at night, I don't really have the energy to finish this. Plus, seems like it'll be unweildy for reading. I'll look at the other two tommorrow and break it up for everybody's peace of mind.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with this link to a Flickr discussion on museums being suspicious of new media.