Twitter and Penguins: How The San Francisco Zoo Uses Twitter [VIDEO]

Posted Mon, 11/09/2009 - 06:59 by Mashable

We know there are a lot of interesting and unique uses for Twitter. We’ve seen Twitter used for customer service, tweets to monitor power usage, and even 140 character marriage proposals, but we never thought about it being used to quickly respond to incidents such as a kid being bit by an otter. Earlier today, a group of Twitter enthusiasts (including me) gathered at the San Francisco Zoo for a zoo tweetup. While in most respect it was your standard gathering of Twitter nerds with phones tweeting and Twitpics flying, the tweetup was unique because of the involvement of the zoo via Twitter. After seeing initial tweets about the upcoming event, the zoo provided anybody who came to the tweetup with a discount, a penguin encounter (videos below), and even access to the normally off-limits Avian Conservation Center. While this is a great example of using Twitter to reach out to and please customers, it isn’t the only way that the San Francisco Zoo (@SFZoo) utilizes Twitter. In the 3 minute clip embedded below, animal keeper Anthony Brown discusses some of the unique stories of how Twitter has helped improve the zoo, including how it has helped find lost phones and even how the zoo respond to a kid being bit by one of the river otters after finding out about the incident via Twitter. Social media, once a phenomenon localized to early adopters, has quickly spread into nearly every channel. The fact that a zoo is using Twitter to interact with its visitors and to know about what’s happening on its grounds in real-time is just another amazing example of the power that social tools provide us. Here’s Anthony’s explanation of how the zoo uses Twitter. Enjoy! BONUS: The Penguins of San Francisco Zoo We did visit a zoo. It would be a shame if we didn’t embed at least one clip exclusively about cute animals: Reviews: Twitter Tags: penguin, San Francisco Zoo, San Francisco-San Jose, twitter, zoo

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