I recently set up a Blakkbyrd Twitter account and started using it to follow arts news. I trawled through several friends' following lists to quickly find the feeds that interested me including @MomaModernArt from the USA which I assumed was associated with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
Approx 2 weeks after I opened the account I received a direct message to my email account.
It was from MomaModernArt asking me about my blog traffic, what was my monthly audience?
I thought this was a strange way to contact me so I replied out of curiosity. Note that the account is called MOMA MODERN ART from the USA. I sent a tweet to @MomaModernArt.
I received another direct message. This time it was from New York City.
Again I thought this was very strange. I visited the website to check it out and it was called http://www.ahh.com.br/presite/ and there was no mention of MOMA. So I sent a noncommittal tweet asking for more information.
I then received an email to advise that @MomaModernArt was following me.
The name has changed from MOMA MODERN ART to MoMA ART LOVERS and its now located in Rio. It appears that I may have found this account through the Gemeente Museum in the Hague. Note that the account has been operating long enough to gain 5000 followers.
I did not receive any further messages from them, or answer to my request for more info.
I continued to receive tweets from @MomaModernArt for a couple of weeks and then noted that the account had been suspended.
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I also follow @MuseumModernArt Museum of Modern Art from New York New York. The genuine MoMA.
And MoMaPS1
1 comment:
Hi,
You’re correct - @MomaModernArt was never associated with The Museum of Modern Art. The account came to our attention after a few people sent messages to us asking if it was legit, and saying that the account had started to follow them. At that time, @MomaModernArt was using our same Twitter profile picture, and had been re-posting our tweets without making note that they being "re-tweeted" ("RT:", etc.) or giving our Twitter account credit. After I posted an announcement on Twitter stating that @MomaModernArt was a "fake" account, I noticed that they switched their profile picture, but were still re-posting our tweets as their own. Since people were confused about who was behind the account, I contacted Twitter about it and they shut it down for "impersonation." I did not know that @MomaModernArt were sending direct messages to people. Thanks for pointing that out.
Thanks,
Victor Samra
Digital Marketing Manager, MoMA
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