Twitter Adoption and Use by Canadian and US Genealogical Societies

A study of Twitter use by Canadian academic libraries just published found that less than half currently tweet, adoption peaked in 2009, recent adoption has declined, yet tweeting remains consistent and active for those libraries with established Twitter accounts.

How do these results compare with Twitter activity for Canadian and US genealogical and family history societies? Here is a quick study using a methodology similar to that of the academic libraries.

CANADA

Cyndislist has a section Canada » Societies & Groups with 167 links. Many of the organizations listed are more broadly historical and others are for smaller local genealogical organizations. I selected 13 of the larger genealogical and family history societies, from west to east: Victoria FHS; British Columbia GS; Alberta FHS; Alberta GS; Saskatchewan GS; Manitoba GS; British Isles FHS of Greater Ottawa; Ontario GS; Quebec FHS; New Brunswick GS; Prince Edward Island GS; Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia; FHS of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Six of the 13 have a link to their Twitter presence on their society main webpage. Two others have a Twitter presence found by searching on Google for the society name and twitter. Societies for which I was unable to establish a Twitter presence are: Alberta GS; Saskatchewan GS; Quebec FHS; New Brunswick GS; Prince Edward Island GS.

Twitter first came online in 2006. The first Canadian society to join was the British Columbia GS in 2008. It remains the active leader having produced 1711 tweets, following 1089 other sites, with 586 followers and having made 70 Twitter posts in October.

The next most active is the Ontario GS Library with a total of 936 tweets including 68 in October.

All societies have more than 150 followers meaning they are serving more people via Twitter than would typically attend a monthly meeting. However, two of the societies were inactive in October.

Adoption of Twitter peaked somewhat later for these societies than for the Canadian academic libraries and like them adoption has declined, the last was in 2012.

It would appear the experience for Canadian genealogical and family history societies broadly parallels that for the academic libraries.

Here are the statistics as of the morning on Monday 3 November 2014.

	Tweets	Following	Followers	Joined	Oct-14
@VicGenealogy	436	255	258	2012	31
@bcgs_ca	1711	1089	586	2008	70
@AlbertaFHS	186	315	357	2010	0
@MbGenealogy	75	236	193	2009	0
@BIFHSGO	818	70	298	2011	11
@OGSLib	936	120	254		68
@NSAncestors	767	395	309	2012	24
@FHSNL	72	20	158	2010	3

USA

US National Societies and those for the larger states were selected for study:  NGS, FGS, California GS, Southern California GS, Texas State GS, NEHGS, Gen Soc of PA, NYG&B, Illinios State GS, Ohio GS, DAR, Florida State GS.

All had links to their Twitter feed from the society website front page. The first joined Twitter in 2009, the last 2012 for a median year of 2010.

NGS and the two California societies were the early adopters. NGS has the most followers and adopts a restrained posting policy averaging twice per day last month. With nearly 500 posts in October FGS is extremely active in posting, reposting sometimes several times. Almost half the societies posted less than 10 times in October.

Here are the statistics as of the afternoon of Monday 3 November 2014.

	Tweets	Following	Followers	Joined	Oct-14
@ngsgenealogy	3472	80	3625	2009	64
@FGSgenealogy	2283	2506	2850	2010	495
@CAancestors	2110	2207	2933	2009	88
@scgsgenealogy	1551	605	2378	2009	41
@TxSGS	1102	958	670	2012	36
@AncestorExperts	819	307	1864	2011	91
@genealogypa	525	570	760	2010	6
@nyfamilyhistory	448	611	1114	2010	7
@ILGenSoc	422	448	1297	2010	2
@OhioGenSoc	91	96	319	2012	6
@TodaysDAR	41	51	435	2010	5
@flsgs	20	30	40	2012	0