Twitter takes wing

Feds discover that short messages can have an unexpected reach

• By Joab Jackson
• Apr 20, 2009

When Veronica McGregor, manager of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's news office, signed up for a Twitter account to send dispatches on behalf of the JPL's Mars Phoenix Lander mission, she thought the blogging service might attract a few hundred followers. Though the audience would be small, she reasoned that issuing progress reports on Twitter might be worthwhile, and because the text messages had to be short, it would only take a few minutes each day.

 “We didn't think it would take a lot of time to do," McGregor said. Twitter seemed simple enough and since she was head of the office, she could write the dispatches herself.

What she didn’t count on was the account’s popularity. It attracted more than 41,000 followers. It also ended up becoming a major educational conduit for explaining the mission and interacting with the public.

At first glance, Twitter’s so-called microblogging service, which started in 2006, seems like a curious, if minor, convenience. You sign up on a Web page for the ability to send short messages to other users who subscribe to the service. Twitter limits the length of messages to 140 characters or less and can include hyperlinks to Web pages. Users can read the messages on a Web site or opt to receive them on a cell phone.

But this simple conduit has become a platform for a lot of conversation. According to a survey by research firm CommStat, almost 10 million people were using Twitter’s service as of February. Although 10 million is still small potatoes compared to, say, Facebook's nation of 200 million users, the number of Twitter users has increased 700 percent from a year ago, included a variety of high profile users in government, business and media.

All a-tweet

NASA has historically looked for effective ways to communicate its discoveries about space and is known for embracng new forms of media. The Phoenix mission provided plenty of new material. Since landing on Mars in May 2008, the expeditionary vehicle has sent back 25,000 images and other scientific data. Previously, the news office had tapped its scientists to write blog entries that describe various missions, but the idea proved to be time-consuming. Twitter’s service emerged as a natural alternative. 

"We thought we were going to just push information out to Twitter,” McGregor said. Instead, “we ended up having a fantastic dialogue with people who had questions about the mission. It really evolved as we discovered there was an audience out there."

Twitter occupies a new, and perhaps essential, space in electronic communications. It is used for short text messages, much like cellular phone messaging, instant messaging, chat rooms and Internet Relay Chat. But the messages are not limited to selected individuals. It goes to anyone who is interested on the assumption that sometimes the information you convey might be of interest to other parties. Except for the messages in those accounts set to private, anyone can find anybody else's messages by searching through Twitter.

Much like using mailing lists, users can gather to discuss topics of shared interest. But Twitter is looser than mailing lists. You don't have to join a subject group, for instance. Rather, you simply append your message's keywords with the appropriate hash tag (#), and other people who are interested in that subject follow the hash tag. You can also send messages directly to another person, either privately or in public. To send in public, you simply put a "@" prefix in front of their Twitter handle.

Reader Comments