• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, April 2, 2010

Nothing tends to elicit yawns like the words "municipal government," but on the other hand, as the most local level of inept faceless bureaucracy we deal with in our day-to-day lives, it's infuriatingly important. At this very moment I'm trying, and failing, to reason my way out of jury duty in Los Angeles; my first mistake was probably the "reason" approach, but I also find myself wishing the Powers That Leave at Three had some kind of online presence where I could get information about rules and procedures and email my silly reasons for wanting out of jury. Instead, I have to call them even though I can't get through half the time, then slowly and painfully extract the conditions for jury exemptions from a jury duty official (re-explaining my circumstances every time), and then mail them a lengthy form which doesn't give me enough room to re-explain those circumstances again.

It turns out not every city government is as backwards and benighted as the Los Angeles jury system -- but most cities still have a long way to go. According to the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, roughly half of American municipalities are using social media to communicate with their citizens. The Fels Institute based this estimate on a survey of 79 towns and cities ranging from under 70,000 inhabitants to over one million, which found that 50% of city governments are on Facebook, while 56% are on Twitter.

These figures look promising enough, but more detailed numbers show that many of these social media initiatives are, for the moment, pro forma. Fels found that only 13 cities had more than 500 fans on Facebook, while only seven had more than 500 followers on Twitter. Doing the math, that means the majority of American cities have fewer Facebook fans than the Norwegian curling team's pants, or Can This Pickle Get More Fans Than Nickelback? Which is pathetic, considering millions of people actually live in these places and thus have a pretty good reason to engage with their governments online. Shoot, just your municipal employees should get you more than 500 fans in the bigger cities.

The Fels Institute also issued guidelines with seven general pointers for city governments contemplating taking the social media plunge. Of course, the advantages of social media for cities are straightforward -- and mirror the benefits for companies and brands which use the medium for marketing purposes. Philadelphia's former Assistant Managing Director, Jeff Friedman was quoted as saying: "The value for us is being able to reach so many people at one time at zero cost. Again, we are such a big organization and there is so much going on. Certainly we feel as a part of this administration we are doing a great deal of fantastic, transformational work and that we need to get this out to people."