Comments on: Tweet Success

By: VeronicaMcG

VeronicaMcG — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:49:30 +0000

Garth,
There are two reasons I chose to use first person for MarsPhoenix. ZorkFox is correct that a very important reason was the 140 character limitation. The other reason was engagement. Before I started the account I looked at several accounts on Twitter to see how other people were using it. Individuals wrote in the first person (of course) while businesses and institutions used third person or RSS feeds of headlines. In the Twitter environment, I found those methods fell flat and didn’t engage me as much as posts in the first person. I wasn’t sure how people would react to the lander “talking” but the response was immediate and overwhelmingly positive so I continued to use it.

We’ve tried the first-person approach in a few other products since then, such as the longer MarsPhoenix blog posts to Gizmodo.com (posted toward the end of the mission at http://tinyurl.com/589wlo). And one of our writers, Whitney Clavin, recently wrote a feature on the Spitzer Space Telescope using the first person to explain how the telescope operates (it’s at: http://tinyurl.com/ll2zwm). We got a great response from readers who said the first person approach made the complexity of the mission much easier to understand. I think it’s an approach we’ll continue to use, but sparingly so we don’t wear it out.

By: JoitheArtist

JoitheArtist — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:16:55 +0000

I only started following @marsphoenix at the very end of its mission, but I’ll never forget it. I even wrote a short story about it! The last few tweets were incredibly poignant.

By: ZorkFox

ZorkFox — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:22:32 +0000

Wow… this article made me want to cry all over again. I love that little lander so much: like Veronica said, it was like being with a sick child the night she started having trouble talking to us.

@Garth: Veronica started using first person tweets because, honestly, it uses fewer characters to say, “I moved my camera arm for the first time!” rather than, “The spacecraft was commanded to move its camera arm for the first time.”

By: Garth Henning

Garth Henning — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:32:49 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to write up your experiences here on OpenNASA.com. I learned a lot.

How did you decide to use the first person? It lent a real “human” narrative to the mission that people normally only associate with the human spaceflight side of the house. How might other missions decide to do the same?

-Garth

By: beachlurk

beachlurk — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:27:20 +0000

I joined Twitter to follow MarsPhoenix, as it was so much easier than trying to remember to check the site for updates. It was like a science fiction story come to life – as short story, as it turned out, but what a great story it was! I often tell people about it – the snow on Mars post, the last words – and the hardest thing is just getting them to realize that no one made this up.
Thanks for a great ride!