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In Search Of NASA's Internet Numbers

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
July 16, 2015
Filed under
In Search Of NASA's Internet Numbers

How a bunch of government space geeks at NASA won the internet, Quartz
“How exactly NASA stumbled upon perhaps the greatest social-media strategy of our time is a story of both blind luck and shrewd management. Of course, the space agency benefits by having amazing pictures, videos, and discoveries to share. Its content transcends demographics and platforms, because it highlights precisely what makes us so human. But its success also contains important lessons for any large organization trying to understand how to break down the barriers between itself and its public.”
Keith’s note: Every time something like this happens people make all sorts of claims about NASA’s Internet prowess – but NASA never issues any numbers to substantiate these claims. I have no doubt that the stats are/were impressive. I have asked NASA for their web and social media statistics. I’ll post what they send me – if they send me anything, that is.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

7 responses to “In Search Of NASA's Internet Numbers”

  1. Littrow says:
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    Good article. Sounds like the planetary folks have their act together-have had since Phoenix. Manned space seems to mainly depend on the initiative of the individual astronauts. Everything else, not so well organized.

  2. Eric Hartwell says:
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    It’s typical of NASA to take credit for something they actually failed to prevent. All this “unauthorized” material started where NASA had limited or no control – outside agencies like JPL, non-NASA astronauts. I doubt very much that Hadfield would have dared to bypass PAO if he worked for NASA.

    People are fascinated by space and space exploration, but NASA’s focus remains on the NASA bureaucracy, which itself is focused on repeating its last great success, the Apollo program.

    “Shrewd management” is a laugh. If management had their way we’d never hear a thing about unmanned exploration. Go JPL!

    • Paul451 says:
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      Indeed, NASA TV during the flyby was garbage. Amateur hour. Live community TV is generally better produced. And yet you could download a piece of software that simulated the entire flyby, down to which instruments were scanning which objects at any given moment.

      How does the same organisation produce those two things?

      They’d arranged for a cross to an ISS astronaut, who (it seemed) was doing nothing else for the entire broadcast, whether he was on camera or not. Just stuck in front of the camera, waiting for the broadcast to end. Yet he simply wasn’t used for anything beyond regurgitating a few “historic moment” PR phrases. Because it’s not like they didn’t have 9 frickin’ years warning to prepare something more substantive.

      How was it not obvious, if you can hijack an astronaut in space for the entire broadcast, to have that astronaut essentially “host” the flyby coverage live from the ISS, instead of some random PAO presenter. (Oh, with a little model of NH and Pluto, showing the current activity. Picture the two floating in micro-g in front of the camera, while Kelly uses them to illustrate a point. Essentially showing the same as on the sim software, but for people who aren’t willing to learn a piece of software more complex than their TV remote.) How would that not reinforce NASA’s “people live in space now, this is what we do” message?

  3. Neal Aldin says:
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    I suspect that they probably do not know how to read the numbers.

    Everybody’s numbers, including Facebook’s or Twitters’s or Instagram’s (and NASA’s) are biased to make themselves look good.

    What really has to be asked is how much useful information (or inspiration) is being communicated. I don’t see that the typical 145 character tweet is going to communicate a lot. You have to consider of the people subscribing, how many pay any attention? How much information can you communicate?

    11 million Facebook likes sounds like a lot. How many people give a like to something they see? (It appears from my crude unscientific observations, about 10% give a like). But over how long a period was that 11 million collected?

    If a typical video is 5 minutes, how much can be communicated? Is it the same kind of communications if its neat pictures of earth set to music as if it is a narrated technical description of scientific results? Of the typical 5 minute video, how many people watch all of it? How many people watch 10 seconds and go off to the next Facebook video that might be more entertaining?

    I would say that social media has its place but Twitter and Facebook do not communicate detailed content in such a way that too many people would come away with a new or different opinion.

    Blogs might be a little better but for far smaller numbers of people.

    Mass media-conventional media probably does better in communicating detailed content.

    Is there a scaling process for comparisons between different media types?

    • kcowing says:
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      Actually they do know the numbers and what they mean. They told me that they do. They do not usually share them but they do know. You analysis is based on a total lack of understanding of how the Internet works and it is getting tiresome to see you beating the same dead horse (hint: you made your point).