This past weekend, I attended a different kind of tweetup. There were a lot of my friends, colleagues and some new people to which I have not met before, but instead of just sitting around in a bar or restaurant talking about what we did for a living or how we were connected, we decided to take a venture out to the San Francisco Zoo.


Organized by event producer extraordinaire, Krystyl Baldwin, and Mashable co-editor Ben Parr, a group of about a dozen technology influencers made their way to the San Francisco Zoo. The event took an interesting twist, however, when the organizers were contacted by the zoo. Not by phone or by email. Instead, it was via Twitter – the microblogging application that has taken the Internet by storm.


Using the Twitter handle @sfzoo, it appeared that the San Francisco Zoo was taking Twitter very seriously and after meeting some of the people behind the Twitter identity, it was apparent that they’re looking to dive further into it having a bigger impact in bringing in more customers to the attraction. Through this connection, the group was able to gain a private viewing of their penguin exhibit and even received a behind-the-scenes tour of their bird/aviary area where the hit of the day was meeting Sequoia, the zoo’s bald eagle who remains in their care after being struck by a bullet.


The San Francisco Zoo seems to be really dedicated to trying to find ways to make Twitter work for their business. With a team of at least three people, the @sfzoo account stands to reach out to help educate people about the latest news happening in the park, whether it’s about the animals or anything else. A fun fact that they told us was that in order to garner more attention towards their Twitter account, they engaged in a contest with the National Zoo in Washington, DC to see who could get to 5,000 followers the fastest. Unfortunately, due to the power of the National Zoo & its relation with the Smithsonian Institution, the SF Zoo failed in its bid to beat the National Zoo to 5,000 followers.


Nevertheless, the SF Zoo is looking to expand its reach using the social site and thanks to Mashable co-editor Ben Parr, here’s a video from one of the animal caretakers, Anthony Brown – who also happens to be one of the people behind @sfzoo:







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