As of today, the New Mexico Steam Locomotive & Railroad Historical Society has a Facebook page...

It is just getting started. We are trying to get ourselves out there. Time will tell if it will be worth it or not...

On that note, feel free to become fans of us! :-)

RMNE (the Naugy) has developed a fledgling facebook page, as well as a blog...

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group ... 6396314528

and the blog...

http://naugy.blogspot.com

DRM
Too Many FL9 Brake Valves, CT

The Cass Scenic Railroad has a Facebook page. It can be found here.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=47666388854&ref=ts

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Albuquerque-NM/New-Mexico-Steam-Locomotive-Railroad-Historical-Society/84862404451?ref=mf

Here is the 2926 restoration effort on Facebook.

NMIH (National Museum of Industrial History) now has a Facebook presence:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bethlehem-PA/National-Museum-of-Industrial-History/95112527822

The house museum at Ardenwood has a facebook page. It isn't particularly pretty or active, but with less than 10 minutes work a week I post little updates of our activities or upcoming events.

I have never promoted it, (It is an experiment flying under the City's radar, we set up a blog, but were told that it was really good, but it scared the powers that be...) but in the 6 months it has been up I have gained 39 fans. The demographics facebook maintains say that the fans are dominated by women 25 to 49, a group that regularly visits the site...

So, no cost, little time...

I think the person maintaining the page has to have the right outlook... the posts need to be about the new train ride, the new car, the arrival of spring, if you wife would start to yawn it probably needs to be on your groups members Yahoo groups site...

In a perfect world we would all have a website, a blog, a facebook page, and a members area on line... all coordinated, all with a clear understanding of what each does, and who it is trying to reach... All maintained regularly.

Of course, internal politics, lack of time (volunteer or otherwise) and a narrow point of view can easily work to derail such efforts.

Facebook is an extremely valuable tool to have, and every museum should have a Facebook page.

For example, I'm a friend of the EBT on Facebook. I receive constant updates about news, restoration efforts, etc, and it's being pushed twords me. I don't have to go out to every little website and get the latest blurbs.

The Cass Scenic Facebook page has some 200 members, and it's a great place to look and find info on the CSRR. Now, one thing that's missing from it is the constant status updates, which I don't usually see on there. Just a little blurb about 'Heisler running on Monday" (which it is, btw) may get somebody to come here to see her run on the first revenue trip of the year.

Twitter was really awesome when tracking the 4449...someone would post when they were leaving, doing station stops, etc. It sure beats sitting around and waiting for it to go by (which isn't a bad thing either).

Phil Martin

I swallowed my disdain for Twitter late last year when I created http://twitter.com/nickelplate765, realizing that even though I loathed the system, I wasn't creating the outreach method for myself, but for others. I've also found that having embedded the uploads into the newsletter section of http://www.765.org, it makes for a relatively simple way to send updates to the site without having to alter any web pages within it. While we have yet to be able to really make use of it like 4449 has, it provides a quick beacon of information for interested parties, and is a good retrospect of moments as they happen. The most difficult part really is just remembering to update when you're busy in the thick of things. So far in this relatively lax "trial mode," it does what it needs.

As one of Facebook's original users in the college crowd in 2004 before it went global, I've yet to be totally convinced that it's right for our organization, but that isn't to say that other operators and museums aren't better matched for it, but they've got to advertise it. Even though I may be part of the generation that's literally swimming in all this goofy technology, I'd prefer to streamline our communications efforts and not spread the message out thinly across a varying degree of information outlets. Personally, there's some disdainful redundancy in having ten different ways to get your message across, and although that seems to be the point in the Age of Information, I'd prefer it keep things streamlined to just a few. Not everyone has a Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, or whathaveyou and they just don't replace more concrete assets like the physical, printed newsletter and the official website. Regardless, you still have to "push" people initially to the content platform, just as you would your website or mailing list. And a lot of us rely on membership dues to keep the lights on, so what added incentive is there for supporters who are regular contributors if everyone is getting the perks? The double edge sword says more info to the public = more potential contributors, but we are in a business that needs repeat customers.

However, the future of all of this social-networking is full integration into everything anyway and my conflicted feelings about adapting social networking into full time public relations may alter with time...

KL

Thus far in the past week, I've run into three articles on the concept of young people abandoning Facebook/Twitter/MySpace/etc. in substantial numbers--on the apparent pretext that if "old" folks (i.e. "the man," for-profit companies, etc.) are invading the turf, then there's no way it can possibly be "cool" (i.e. more cutting-edge and "hip" than thou) anymore......

I'm old enough to remember when AOL "chat-rooms" were THE up-and-coming thing, until they got overwhelmed with people constantly posting "ne1 got nude pix britny speers let me no". The same thing is happening to other alternative/hip sites like 4chan, which is now getting overrun with spammers and people posting phony URLs to pages that upload viruses and Trojans instead of, say, the latest purported Lindsey Lohan or Emma Watson "sex video".

Note that some of us just asked ourselves "Is AOL still around anymore?" My point exactly.

(And, you know, somewhere in the archives of this forum, there just might be a screed I posted on just what a rail preservation chatroom would end up looking like.......... or was that in a YahooGroup I moderated?)

It was coming for awhile, but the Monticello Railway Museum is now on Facebook. Check out our events and you will get a sneak peek at our latest happenings.

Here is mine.
http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=f40ph ... 7924618..1

That's funny. I was asking one of our other officers this very day whether he thought we should through up a facebook page. It seems like it would be a better method of communicating in quick fashion with volunteers and members. I went ahead and put up a page for North Texas Historic Transportation/Fort Worth Streetcar. Now I need our members and volunteers to go out and get facebook accounts so they can interact. A lot of them are web savvy (or at least they can send and receive email), but not sure if many are at Facebook level yet.

The other day I finally took the plunge and got the Conrail Historical Society's twitter efforts going.

http://twitter.com/theCRHS

So far we're using it to generate interest in various things going on with the society. Occasional posts about cool images added to our galleries, or about some of our efforts.

Generally, I just see it as a "sticky" way to get the brand out there to people, and to keep the notion that we exist fresh in their minds.

Also, since I don't have time to post all day, I'm using hootsuite to schedule future tweets.
http://hootsuite.com/

It's pretty handy, also because it does some basic analytics for you if you use their owly url shortener. Cool stuff, but then again, I love web analytics.

The Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth,GA has been on Facebook for a few months now and is doing quite well. 500+ fans.
FB is a good way to let your fans know whats going on, as well as post photos/videos of restoration efforts and equipment. A link on your website yields alot of fans too.

The Colfax Railroad Museum is on facebook.

Our profile page may be found here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Colfax-Ra ... 047?ref=ts