An Avatar Picture Worth 1,000 Friends

Do default avatar pictures bother you, or you still shrinking back from showing the world your pearly whites or using an agency logo on a consumer-oriented social media site?

It’s often surprising how many new social media users fail to update their generic avatars when starting out. And failing to do so is likely to be a major setback for effective use of social media tools. A study earlier this year by marketing firm HubSpot looked at 9 million Twitter accounts and found that accounts with profile pictures had 10 times as many followers as account with generic avatar images.

Most social sites make putting up a picture part of the sign-up process, others, like government-focused social network GovLoop on the Ning platform, have an approval process before you can upload a photo. Sadly, one look at GovLoop’s members tab tells you that most people aren’t bothering with that second step. But for 10 times the contacts, it seems like social media suicide not to do so.

Not everyone is comfortable putting up their picture on a social site, and there are plenty of other ways to dress up your avatar without. This article from Mashable talks about creative avatar images, and just about any creative picture is a lot better than the default images, such as the Twitter egg shown here.

For the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office on Twitter, we used a classic mug shot of City Attorney Dennis Herrera, top right (smiling in your picture also means more friends, studies have shown), and a custom background with our agency logo and a little blackbird. The simple custom background is fairly popular, eliciting responses like those of local journalist Lois Beckett, “How could Twitter bird + formal seal not be awesome?”

Hopefully this gives you some ideas on how to put your best foot – er, face – forward in open government social media efforts.

– Adriel Hampton

‘The Twitter SF Officials Daily’

If you’re using Twitter, you’ve probably already been exposed to Paper.li, the site that allows anyone to create daily Twitter newspaper based on lists of Twitter members. It’s a very nice tool, and one we’re now using in the City Attorney’s Office to create a daily update from links and photos shared by more than three dozen San Francisco officials and agencies we follow.

The daily “paper” provides a quick overview of all the stories shares by SF gov, from news stories to official press releases. Today’s edition, for example, has stories on the San Bruno fire and ultra-high-speed Internet, news of initiatives and field work by Mayor Gavin Newsom and State Sen. Mark Leno, photos from Department of Works official Mohammed Nuru, and a contest and a survey from the Public Utilities Commission.

You can check out the SF Officials Daily here, and let us know if your city has one – we’d love to check it out.

– Adriel Hampton

On Twitter, Engagement Equals Influence for Gov’t Accounts

A new analysis of government Twitter accounts in San Francisco shows that the most interactive are also the most influential. Of the 35 accounts surveyed last week (excluding political accounts by elected officials and inactive accounts), 11 are graded either above 99 by TwitterGrader, or above 20 by Klout, two of the most trusted Twitter influence analytics services. These accounts in general have two things in common: a high level of replies to and mentions of other Twitter users, and, they follow a significant number of other accounts.

The only exceptions to this trend comes from two popular public safety accounts, those run by the SF Police Department and the Department of Emergency Management. Both follow only a small number of other official accounts, and do not interact with other Twitter members (broadcast messages only).

Of the remaining nine accounts, all actively engage with other Twitter members, and six include others’ user names in more than half of their tweets. Additionally, eight of the nine follow at least 10 percent as many Twitter users as follow them.

The most influential San Francisco government-related Twitter accounts are: BART, 311, Asian Art Museum, Golden Gate Park, Emergency Management, City Attorney, Environment, Arts, Water, Police, and technology innovations manager Jay Nath.

You can check out the full survey at http://bit.ly/SFonTwitter.

– Adriel Hampton

Check Out How SF Gov Stacks Up on Twitter

More than three dozen San Francisco officials, agencies and programs are active on Twitter, using the microblogging tool to broadcast messages, interact with citizens and even accept service requests.

The SF City Attorney’s Office is highly active on Twitter, and in this spreadsheet we’ve put together, you can check out various City and County of San Francisco Twitter efforts, from how many folks each account is following to what percentage of tweets are conversational. (The analysis does not include SF officials that link their Twitter profile to campaign sites, or accounts that have been inactive more than a few months.)

You can follow the City Attorney’s Office on Twitter here, and also connect with the City Attorney’s Office on Flickr. Also, check out our daily Twitter newspaper made up of SF officials’ tweets.

– Adriel Hampton

San Francisco City Attorney’s Office on Flickr

Of late, I’ve been been using the photo sharing site Flickr more and more, shifting my focus from researching its 4 billion images to uploading fresh content and networking through the site. Flickr has tremendous functionality for creating blog content and populating other social media platforms as well. I’ve got a recent post about using Flickr in a broader content strategy, and Dan Slee of UK local gov’t has a great guide called “Social Photo: 11 groovy ways Flickr can be used by local government.”

One of the great local government examples we’ve looked at is the Flickr activity of the Washington State Department of Transportation, managed by Jeremy Bertrand. Today, we opened an official Flickr account for the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, where we hope to not only highlight our great city, but also feature photos that illustrate the work of our office, from the hard-fought battle for marriage equality, to City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s anti-gang initiatives.

If you are a San Francisco photographer, or just interested in connecting with our content and San Francisco favorites, please add us on Flickr. We also welcome suggestions on how you think we can best use this channel.

– Adriel Hampton

Why Twitter’s Gov’t Outreach is a Big Win for the Gov 2.0 Movement

For at least that past two years, a tiny yet fast-growing group of folks who call themselves “Gov 2.0 advocates” has worked tirelessly to spread a message that emerging technologies, low-cost communications and digital culture can reshape government to be more collaborative, transparent, efficient and connected to its citizens.

We have advocated for humanizing government, and for using new tools to bring more citizens into the deliberative process and to help shape the future of both our democracy and the bureaucracy. One of the main tools for the Gov 2.0 movement has been social media, as activists and line workers join technologists and political reformers in calling for more open communication between officials and agencies and the public they represent and serve.

Last week, Government 2.0 – a term first used by Bill Eggers in his 2005 e-gov-focused book of the same name, and that has become almost synonymous with Web 2.0 as developers have turned on to the promise of government-brokered data troves and universal open standards – won a significant victory. Twitter, the popular social media messaging service that has serves as a platform for thousands of startups using its architecture and user base, announced that it is hiring for its first field office, focused on the government sector.

Twitter Goes to DC
Twitter’s job posting and further remarks by corporate spokesman Sean Garrett explain the DC-based position as the first step towards a public affairs unit, with support for innovative and engaging uses of Twitter in politics and policymaking. A new blog by Garrett and his team has since March been highlighting interesting government uses of the platform, from San Francisco’s integration of Twitter and 311 non-emergency service requests, to construction updates and border crossing wait times by tweet, to the British Prime Minister’s communications usage.

Twitter, thanks to millions of active and aggressive content-sharers and innovators around the world, has transformative powers. Conan O’Brien took to the service to recreate himself after losing his show, creating numerous accounts, rallying his fan base and using the free and frenetic publicity it to launch a comedy tour. Legendary film critic Roger Ebert, after panning Twitter as trite, has become one of its staunchest advocates, using it to deliver and amplify commentary on everything from film to politics to sport and humanism. Newark Mayor Corey Booker has used it to spread a hands-on philosophy of hope far beyond his New Jersey township.

Twitter Grows Due to User Innovations
Twitter’s growth and popular features have often evolved from the minds and whims of its user base, from the intensely popular “retweet” convention for repeating and affirming others’ messages, to the hashtag form of semantic tagging in its short messages, to Follow Friday, the day that tweeps around the world recognize friends and favorites.

Government 2.0 – which first hit Twitter’s mainstream of “trending topics” during a March 16, 2009, pilot broadcast of the Gov 2.0 Radio podcast including govies, contractors and consultants calling in from South by Southwest and their DC-area homes – is now set to join the legacy of user-driven Twitter conventions. The first Twitter office outside of San Francisco will help connect politicians with their constituents and agencies with the public. It will help serve an engaged and innovative Government 2.0 movement, while that movement continues to shape and grow Twitter’s utility.

Government 2.0 and the use of social media for politics and public service are still in their infancy, but it’s safe to say that Twitter’s new focus on this arena is a milestone of which we can be proud.

 – Adriel Hampton

 References:

Clever Twitter Accounts – Government

How Conan O’Brien Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Twitter

Roger Ebert – Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!

Global Gov 2.0 – A Twitter List