Username: @BryantUPrez
Tweets: 117
Followers: 2,098
Following: 68
HC: President Machtley, you are certainly the Campus Celebrity at Bryant every week, but you’ve recently become a Twitter Celeb! You consistently get hundreds of retweets, and on February 4th you had over 1,000 retweets and were trending in Rhode Island when you tweeted about the possibility of school cancellation due to snow! You even received a standing ovation in Salmo! How did that make you feel?
Prez: It was a surprise and humbling. It proves that students are always grateful when they get to sleep in.
HC: Any advice on how to get so many retweets?
Prez: Ask a question that’s very important to the audience.
HC: You tried twitter briefly in 2012 and recently became an active tweeter again on November 16, 2013. Being new to Twitter, what do you think of it?
Prez: I haven’t quite completely figured it out. I’m trying to figure out when and how to best use it. It can become trivialized by overuse or pointless comments and then it can become a not appropriate vehicle if you want to say something substantive. It’s really an interesting medium for people to read things through. They can choose whether to acknowledge and respond or they don’t have to. It allows me to see what’s on the minds of younger people because it’s streams of consciousness.
HC: Any frustrations with it?
Prez: I can’t spend my day responding to every tweet. I read all of the replies but I can’t respond to all them even though I know people sometimes want responses, but I just don’t have the time.
HC: You’ve been able to connect with your students even further because of your Twitter account, yet another thing you do that most University presidents do not. What made you decide to do so?
Prez: When I tried it before I didn’t understand the potential impact. I wasn’t confident of my ability to be in this medium or that it would be worth my time and the readers’ time. Then a student asked me why I didn’t tweet when they knew I tried before. When I used it before I was private so I had little impact and therefore I wasn’t exposed to the magnitude of the medium. Athletics was a motivational force to get me to use Twitter to promote the 6th fan competition. And as a result it helped us win $10,000!
HC: What do you think about the power this social media can give to people and organizations?
Prez: For me, it is still unexplored territory where the possibilities aren’t fully known. I’ve heard professional athletes, singers, celebrities and others have companies tweeting for them on their Twitter to promote themselves. I don’t follow any celebrities so I don’t know. Will people follow a product? I don’t know how long it will survive in this ever changing tech world. But it is a new way for people to get a direct connection to other people. I’ve been thinking personally about how I could use it more substantively. It clearly gets the word out fast. Kids don’t read their emails regularly but with Twitter they’re up to date by the minute.
HC: Any last comments?
Prez: This is a digital media world. I’m a digital learner. You’re a digital native. I go through it with a little skepticism but it’s very interesting territory to explore.
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