What do NASA and Charlie Sheen have in common asks Simon Houpt? They’re both killing it on Twitter:

• The Mars Rover Curiosity has a twitter account that went from 140,000 followers to 800,000 in just four days.
• The twitter feed is managed by three women who make frequent references to pop culture.
• The name Curiosity was selected in a contest that was announced on Twitter.
• NASA used to let news networks hook into its video feeds and images, but NASA felt that the news media weren’t doing them justice. After the space shuttles were retired the airwaves were dominated by talk of NASA’s imminent demise, when in reality they had exciting initiatives in motion such as the Mars rover.
• NASA thus decided that it needed to bypass news networks and use social media to engage with the populace directly.

To read more including a short history of NASA, the “comically informal vernacular” that is sometimes used, how NASA’s broadcast compared with CNN’s, the “hot guy with a red and blue mohawk in Mission Control”, and why Housing and Urban Development probably wouldn’t benefit from a social media strategy, click here.

Source: The Globe and Mail

Via: Marginal Revolution