Now this is storytelling and the right way to use social media tools. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first manned Apollo moon landing by essentially rebroadcasting the event. This may go down as the mother of all reruns.
The JFK Library has put up the “We Choose the Moon” Website, where people can follow the Apollo mission over 11 stages. Stage 1 is underway now, leading up to the anniversary launch on July 16. There are three Twitter feeds: CAPCOM, Apollo 11 spacecraft and Eagle lander. Of course, I subscribed. There are Mission Tracker widgets for Facebok, MySpace and the PC desktop, live audio feed and sharing across many different social networks.
I hear lots of blabbering about the end of journalism. Those doomsayers are wrong. “We Choose the Moon” is what the new journalism/news media should be about. The first manned moon landing is as relevant today as 40 years ago. The reliving of history in real time using social media services is simple brilliant.
My 14 year-old daughter has no reference for understanding, say, Communism and the Soviet Union. Why not rebroadcast the fall of the Berlin Wall in real time, just like the Moon landing—or other historical events of the last 50 years? FOX TV show “24” is popular in part because of sense of being in real time. Isn’t real, real time even more compelling?
The past and the future suddenly meet oddly together. I love it.