Big Bird Tweets: How corporations use social media to gauge public persona

Computerworld - SAN FRANCISCO -- Social media sites such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are playing an increasing role in IT as corporations set up and monitor the sites to learn about their public image.

Even Muppets have their own profiles.

"Media companies and social always go together. In the media industry, your whole world is about ratings," said Noah Broadwater, CTO of Sesame Workshop, the production company for Sesame Street. "So yeah, Big Bird tweets."

The need for a corporate focus on social media was part of this week's CITE conference, which is looking at various ways traditional consumer technology is working its way into the enterprise.

Sesame Workshop uses its social media sites to gauge viewer perception of its programs, and as strange as it may sound, the network show doesn't always come off as apolitical.

For example, an episode of Sesame Street spoofed CNN by having garbage can-residing Oscar the Grouch as a commentator on "GNN Network News." The Muppet commented on how GNN was garbage, but "if you really want trash, you want to go to Pox," Broadwater said, referring to a spoof on Fox News.

"We got a huge backlash on Twitter over Pox. All these people just started, well, trashing us," Broadwater said.

So what did Sesame Street do? What else? Playing off the old adage that any publicity is good publicity, it rolled the Twitter controversy into real appearances by the Muppets on Fox's Bill O'Reilly Show. That appearance, in turn, sparked a firestorm among liberals on Twitter, so the next day, the Muppets appeared on CNN with Anderson Cooper.

Sesame Workshop monitored another social media brouhaha after it aired an episode of Sesame Street that showed a mother breastfeeding her baby.

"On one day Republicans hate us. On the next day, liberals hate us. And somehow in the end, they all love us," he said.

Sesame Workshop allocates one full-time manager and four interns as the online personas of its Muppets, including Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird.

And, you might be a bit surprised to learn who's visiting the Muppet's YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages. It's not kids, it's their parents.

Besides having grown up with the children's TV show, which leads to a nostalgic interest in the Muppets, parents will often visit the sites in order to share what they see with their kids, Broadwater said.

In stark juxtaposition to Sesame Workshop, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) uses social media pages to try to improve its image with the public. DMV CIO Bernard Soriano said that with 9,000 employees and 169 field offices trying to service 24 million licensed drivers, social networks are well-tailored to provide a more personal touch -- even if it's virtual.

The California DMV uses both Twitter and Facebook to answer questions and to monitor public feedback about in-person service. The agency also posts documentation, such as driver safety information and instruction manuals, online.

"We look at social media as something that can help us achieve a strategic goal - customer service," Soriano said. "It's one way of reaching out and trying to improve the way we conduct our services -- within limits."