On July 18th, 2008 I embarked on a social media experiment: The Embodiment and Anthropomorphication of a Public Space. This three week experiment had some ups and downs, garnered a bit of attention, and prompted a new type of tweeting. Here's a bit of backstory... 

Photo by Michael C. W. Murphy

Snuggled tight in the center of Philadelphia is Rittenhouse Square. It's a public park, one city block in size and is easily the most visited of the city's green spaces.

On a recent visit, I started paying attention to the large percentage of people by themselves. While some of these park dwellers were just passing through, a large percentage were reading, eating, or playing music solo. Thinking about this made the park seem less of a hub for community... Instead it started to feel transient; filled yet empty.

As usual, I was about to Twitter [?] my location... I wanted to write that I was @rittenhouse, but realized this profile didn't exist. Quickly the pieces seemed to fall into place. 

After a few brief discussions with some close friends over the parameters of this project, I set up the Rittenhouse Twitter. And sent out my first few messages:

Photo Credit: Philebrity.comAfter following a few locals, my numbers started to grow. Within the first week nearly 300 people started following and interacting with "Ritt." 

Concerned with the limited scope Twitter might be able to attract considering how new it is, I set up a Facebook page for the park. This too took off very quickly, and attracted many users not on twitter. Thanks to the social graph, the page continues to grow, with nearly 20 new members each day. Analytics of New Fans to the Rittenhouse Facebook Page

Setting Goals

Photo Credit: J Tannenwald from Flickr

Update on Monday, August 11, 2008 at 04:04PM by Daniel Delaney

Annie Heckenberger (@anniemal) a Philadelphia based social media strategist and all around awesome gal, suggested I post a bit about some key learnings which came from this experiment. So, here goes:

Key Learnings

Anonymity

The topic of anonymity was something I really had trouble with when starting this project, and of course became even more difficult when people from the Philadelphia Inquirer expressed interest in publishing an article about the project. The question at hand: Should the person behind the park be anonymous or transparent?

While I'm a huge supporter of transparency in social media, it's important not to forget about context and audience for this project. I feel that stating the person behind an effort like this should have been transparent from the start is wrong. It goes without saying that anyone with half a brain understands that it's actually not a park sending out SMS messages, but did that keep people from participating? Survey says... No! 

In fact, I believe that the anonymity was the main reason people engaged with the park! As I mentioned in the main post, no one wants to go to Disney and watch Mickey Mouse putting on the costume, regardless of the fact that we know someone is behind the mask. So, with this project, it WAS the anonymity that created the allure and encouraged people to engage. And while there was a small percentage of people who chose not to engage, I feel that the reason for that came down to control issue... People want what they can't, want to know what they don't.

Was this Successful?

Well, you can't please all of the people all of the time. But personally, I'm excited by the ~1000 people that actively engaged, conversed, and spread word of Rittenhouse on Twitter & Facebook. Did it gain some negative attention? Sure did! As mentioned above, one of my favorite blogs Philebrity dug into the project a bit saying that the potluck was awkward. And... as a result... more followers! The day that article came out, a heap of new people started engaging. So, of course Philebrity would rip into it, if they didn't rip into things, they wouldn't have readers! Duh.

So, in my view, this was a complete win! I'm SO THANKFUL to the hundreds of people who engaged like children waiting up for Santa, and played pretend with me. It was a really great time!

What's next for @Rittenhouse?

Well, as I mentioned in the first post, the main goal for the project was to build community... something it successfully did, and has continued to accrue. One suggestion was to pass it along to the Rittenhouse Row group for their use, another thought was to pass it along to an anonymous *tweeter.* 

Again, this is something I'll have to explore. By passing along access to the Rittenhouse Row Group the intent, tonality, and community might change drastically! As history shows, people truly enjoyed engaging with the park as if it were real; able to answer. I've already disheartened a number of people by reveling myself, passing it along to a group with different intent seems like more of a violation! It'd be like passing along a mailing list for different intent. 

But I think it's best to leave that up to the people. I encourage you to discuss whether you'd enjoy having the mystery of your anthropomorphic park or instead having it go to a wonderful group, knowing that the tonality and intent might change.

Thank you so much!

Again, I need to send a big THANK YOU to everyone who helped make this project a success! Thanks for playing pretend for a while. :) Hopefully, we can reengage again soon.