Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

Social networks are going to be redefined.

Trying to keep up-to-date with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. is not a new problem.  There are entire desktop applications dedicated to aggregating this content for your consumption. Still I find myself drowned by the noise. It would be optimistic to say that a quarter of this social stream directly interests me. Additionally this content is decoupled from other forms of communication (i.e. SMS / e-mail).  These are some of the reasons why I am excited about the prospects of Google Wave.

Last week Google announced what can best be described as a communications platform.  It mixes traditional e-mail with a slew of modern features.  Real-time collaborative editing, event planning, and a game of chess are just a few of the tasks you can carry out from within the platform. — Anyone used SubEthaEdit? — The engineers developed Wave by asking themselves what e-mail would look like if it were invented today. The result is e-mail on steroids. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, my name is Kate… and I’m a social media addict. I blog, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr…you name it. Whew. I feel better.

Web 2.0 logos from Flickr user stabilo boss

Lucky for me, social media has become an integral part of the way museums create an interactive experience for the museum visitor, especially here at the IMA.

That said, we at the IMA would like to invite all our blog readers and fellow bloggers to peel your eyes from the computer screens for one night, and put a face to the local blogs you love to read. (Don’t worry, we’ll have wi-fi so you can live-blog and tweet to your heart’s content!)

Come one, come all...

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Well, we’ve officially embraced the Twitter revolution on a personal level here at the IMA.

Our timing could of probably been better considering the outlandish and annoying mainstream media coverage over these past few weeks. Just last Friday, Twitter almost had the Best Week Ever (@BWEtv), it was featured on a segment of the Daily Show, and you can’t seem to turn on the news with out hearing a lame joke about tweeting. Don’t be surprised if your grandma starts following you!

The problem I see now is that every organization is jumping in and using it as a marketing tool mostly. The fact is, it can be a great marketing tool, but if you abuse it for that purpose you’re probably going to lose followers in a hurry. If it didn’t work for your blog, it’s definitely not going to work on Twitter. Just my 2 cents.

I’ll be quick to admit, I didn’t get it in the beginning, and I’m sort of late on the tweet train even though I’ve had a Twitter account open for a while now. But I must say, I am a believer! I’m going to try make an effort to give a better look behind the scenes at the IMA over the next few weeks as I hone my skills.

If your not sold like I wasn’t, I’ve compiled a list of links that should give you reason enough to join in on the revolution and hopefully explain what and why better. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to believe, but Facebook is kind of old.

As of this month, at the ripe old age of five, it’s ancient in Web 2.0 terms. But for being a senior citizen of the web, Facebook sure has managed to stay fresh and relevant. What started as a social experiment in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room has grown to capture over 150 million users.

icanhascheezburger.com

Here are some ways Facebook has managed to grow and adapt so far…

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Did you know 73% of Americans use the internet at least occasionally? That is a lot of people! So using texting, email, blogs, social networks, etc. for politics was an obvious and very smart decision. Read the rest of this entry »