See Whats Up at the DMV

I visit the website for the California Department of Motor Vehicles many times per day for work. I always know exactly where I need to go so I never really bothered to look around. But today was a bit of a slow day and I noticed some things on the DMV's website that surprised me. Some of them were pretty cool; some I thought, "What?"

Did you know that you can get the Drivers Handbook in Armenian, Chinese, Korean, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese? You can get guides for teen drivers and senior drivers? You can even find sample written drivers tests that you can practice on!

Those things I think are pretty cool and helpful...but did you know that the DMV can be found twittering, facebooking, myspacing and youtubing? I kid you not!

Now I don't want to show my age here, but my first thought was "What?" What in the world is the DMV doing twittering, facebooking, myspacing and youtubing? But then I watched and visited and I can see what they're doing. They're getting in touch with the younger, newer drivers and some of the older, mature drivers who are still Internet savvy, like me!

The youtube video is kind of cute in that there's a sarcastic teenage girl (are there any other kind?) and a silly clueless boy (ditto); and they're having a discussion about studying for their drivers test online. This video has had 468,439 views.

On twitter, the DMV has 1,139 followers and is following 15 users. Who would the DMV choose to follow? Well there's Ca.gov, California DMHC, Cal Fire, MYMSA, Alameda County, CA Child Suppert, Nevada DMV, Gov Schwarzenegger, twitbacks, Sacramento Sheriff, U.S. Senate Votes, USGS, Caltrans, George Valverde, and CalPERS...I was kind of surprised that the CA CHP wasn't being followed. I guess it's cause they're used to being the ones doing the following!

On myspace, the DMV has a pretty cool little picture that looks like two kids being knocked out of the way of a speeding silver sports car that has the DMV logo on the side of the car. (It's probably being driven by George Valverde, the CA DMV Director.) Just kidding George! (I'm sure he has friends at the CHP.)

Then there's facebook. Facebook is by far the most tame, but the DMV does have 332 fans.

So really there's no point to my post today other than I just thought it was interesting what the CA DMV is doing. For all of you in other states that don't care what the CA DMV is doing, thanks for humoring me :-)