Using tweet-ups, NASA stokes the public’s interest
Though the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s shuttle program came to an end this month, Twitter users are still excited about upcoming events.
When space shuttle Atlantis touched down for the last time ever July 21, NASA was concurrently trying something for the first time ever. A group of 50 people watched Atlantis hit the runway in the agency’s first tweet-up for a shuttle landing.
The landing tweet-up was an opportunity to give a few more people the chance to experience the end of the space shuttle era. In 24 hours, about 5,500 people registered for the 150 tweet-up slots for the July 8 shuttle launch. That number was up from the 4,100 who registered to see Endeavour’s last launch in May.
“That is a fairly consistent uptick we saw between each shuttle launch tweet-up,” says Stephanie Schierholz, social media manager at NASA. “I don’t know if it was because it was the end. I suspect it was a combination of that with just more people hearing about it.”
Though the shuttles are now a part of history, NASA’s tweet-up program is just getting into gear, as lots of Twitter users continue to register to attend launches for unmanned missions.
End of an era
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