Social Networking Archives

At first glance there's no similarity between the oh-so-hip-microblogging service Twitter and the staid and secretive National Security Agency.

But when it comes to providing details on new data centers -- sensitive information for both outfits -- NSA and Twitter both seem to believe the best publicity is almost no publicity.

NSA let the Army Corps of Engineers put out the news of the contract for its new $1.2 billion data center in Salt Lake City, while Twitter has been positively mum on its Salt Lake City data center plans since a blog post in June by a Twitter engineer.

In an article that sounds eerily familiar to anyone who has tried to pry information out of NSA, the Salty Lake City Tribune reported Twitter "clamped a lid" on providing any more details about its data center plans.

In yet another take on the NSA PR playbook, the Twitter clampdown extended to its contractor, C7 data centers, which the Tribune said had been asked by Twitter not to disclose any information.

Maybe Twitter is trying to play up its secrecy so it can sublease some capacity from the NSA.

Be forewarned: This is a shameless plug.

I'm moderating a Government Executive webinar on Tuesday on the use of smart phones and smart phone apps, in the Army. I hope you can join me.

We'll get the 10,000-foot view from Carol Wortman, acting director of the Army
Architecture Integration Center, and the grunts' test perspective from Col. Marisa Tanner, chief of the mission command capability division of the Future Force Integration Directorate, and Mike McCarthy, director of the Mission Command Complex at the directorate. Tanner and McCarthy are Fort Bliss in Texas.

I believe this will be informative -- and because I'm involved, fun, too.

You can register here.

Agencies have been pretty much experimenting with social media for the past two years, writing blogs (that are mostly routine), Tweeting (mostly press releases) and conducting an occasional town hall meeting (that is typically very orderly). It's understandable that many of the attempts have been carefully orchestrated offerings, given the novelty of the technology and the risk-averse nature of bureaucracies.

Surprising, that was recognized by the Defense Department's Armed with Science blog, which announced on Thursday that the department had updated its Social Media Hub website. From the post:

With the unveiling of the updated Social Media Hub, we hope it will exist as more than just a website advertising DoD's latest Facebook posts or Twitter feed. Rather, our goal is to create a "hub" in every essence of the word--a place where anyone interested in learning more about social media practices amongst the services, as well helpful social media tips and tricks, could come to find everything they might need right at their fingertips.

The redesigned Social Media Hub is meant to serve as a resource, an online tool box for individuals who want to find out how to register their own page, voice social media-related questions, or just stay up to date on the latest DoD social media news.

The real performance test will be if the tool box will create more communities and interaction.

A prolific -- and popular -- blogger at the Transportation Security Administration is also now spreading his insight to the Defense community. Bob Burns, a.k.a. Blogger Bob, wrote his first post for the Armed With Science Blog, which appears on the DoD Live website.

Blogger Bob launched his gig as a periodic contributor to the Tech Tuesday posts on the science blog. His first effort covered the technologies TSA uses to fight terrorism.

Blogger Bob is building off his work on the TSA Blog, which routinely receives dozens of comments from the public on its posts -- many of which can be quite testy. When Blogger Bob announced he would be contributing to Armed With Science, for example, he received both congratulations and sarcastic comments:

Bob, I'm sure you can you see the irony here. You work for an organization that has, for over a month, completely ignored an extensive analysis in the top scientific journal Nature stating that there is no Science behind the SPOT program. You work for an organization that believes that the liquid state of matter dangerous if not contained by ziplock baggies. You work for an organization that obsesses over every single object passengers carry, but does nothing about all other people who have contact with airplanes.

There is absolutely no Science in what the TSA does.

and

If TSA is, as you allege in this blog post, "armed with science," why have you refused to acknowledge or respond to Nature's evisceration of your "BDO" program as complete nonsense?

To TSA's credit, their blog has consistently posted these rants on its posts. Wonder if the DoD Live site will follow the same policy.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Army both kicked off projects to develop applications for mobile gadgets and gismos in March. The House Armed Services Committee strongly favors the Apps for the Army project over DARPA's Transformative Apps program.

The House committee said in its report on the fiscal 2011 Defense Department Appropriations bill that it favored the Apps for the Army competition backed by Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, the Army's chief information officer, because he has "day-to-day experience supporting the warfighting community."

The report said this means Sorenson has "a closer understanding of the warfighter's needs and requirements" compared to DARPA. The report also criticized DARPA for not ensuring its program would not conflict with the Army project.

Entries in the Apps for the Army competition, which will award $30,000 in cash prizes, closed May 15. Margaret McBride, Sorenson's spokeswoman, said 141 soldiers and Army civilians registered in teams or as individuals to participate in the application development challenge.

Apps submitted included 17 for Google Android phones, 16 for the Apple iPhone, and seven for the gizmo loved by the military, the Blackberry.

McBride said the Army will put the entries through a security review and then they will go to the judges. Winners will be announced at the , which runs from August 3-5 in Tampa.

Japan, which provided the world with its first robotic dog in 1999, has now turned on the world's first tweeting satellite. The tweety bird is a four-inch square, 2.2 pound CubeSat from Intelligent Space Systems Laboratory at the University of Tokyo.

The satellite, CubeSat XI-V, was launched in October 2005, and started sending out its tweets on April 30. These sat-tweets are in Kanji characters and provide operational details on the satellite.

CubeSats have been developed and operated primarily by universities, but now the Air Force has decided to develop its own minisatellites. The Air Force Space Command says it plans to issue a procurement for two CubeSats this June.

I hope they have built in Twitter capacity so they can send tweets to Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an unabashed Twitter fan.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stands out as a social media pioneer in the Defense Department, having launched his own Facebook page in July 2009 and is a regular Tweeter.

For the past year, Mullen posted items mostly after an event or speech, but now he intends to use social media tools to actively steer discussions ahead of events, according to a memo outlining his new social media strategy dated March 23, 2010. It was posted on Wednesday on the Defense Social Media Hub.

Navy Capt. John Kirby, Mullen's public affairs officer who wrote the memo, said Mullen and his staff need to focus on the Internet as the primary means for internal and external communications. He said this means JCS needs to move away from static forms of communication such as PDF documents and more dynamic forms that allow for the delivery of rich, multi-media content. Kirby wrote:

We must begin publishing our products with embedded links to other content, pictures and videos to meet the expectations of our on-line audiences (think iPad and Kindle friendly.

This iPad audience already includes the director of the National Security Agency, Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, who bought his iPad shortly after it went on sale in April.

JCS also needs to develop a mobile version of the JCS.mil to serve iPhone and Blackberry users, he said.

When Mullen and his staff prepare for a road trip or speech, he needs to use posts, tweets and blogs ahead of the event to "start driving the online conversation," Kirby said.

The numbers make it clear why Mullen and JCS need to embrace social media, he added. Facebook, Kirby wrote, is now the second most popular website in the United States behind Google, with 134 million visitors in January, with Twitter recording 23.5 million visits that month.

Multiple federal agencies, led by the Coast Guard, are trying to manage the oil spill and damaged drill site that is spewing at least 5,000 barrels of a day into the Gulf of Mexico. They have set up an omnibus website called Deepwater Horizon Response, named after the drilling rig that exploded and caused the mess.

The site serves as a launch pad to sites operated by Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter that are dedicated to the disaster.

NASA has set up special a Web page that features satellite photos of the oil slick, and the Environmental Protection Agency has a site devoted to its response to the spill.

The Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
feature the Gulf disaster prominently on their home pages. But sadly, all this Web tech can do nothing to fix a well head 5,000 feet underwater.

A robotic arm of a Remotely Operated Vehicle attempts to activate the Deepwater Horizon Blowout Preventor on April 22.

Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III, left, and Don Faul, director of online operations for Facebook, talk to employees in Silicon Valley, Calif., on April 28.
Photo by Air Force Master Sgt. Jerry Morrison

While the average Facebook employee probably does not meet Defense Department attire or haircut standards, Defense Deputy Secretary William J. Lynn III told a group of Facebookers at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., on Wednesday that he viewed the two cultures as congruent.

In a sign that social media has been embraced by an at-first-reluctant Defense Department, Lynn told the employees, "You're very much a part of our world." He then added, "We're also very much a part of your world. We use social media just as other organizations do. It's a critical element for us."

Lynn is visiting Silicon Valley companies on his road trip, and he told Facebook workers that Defense needs a few good force-multiplier ideas from commercial pioneers.

Who would have thunk that a top Defense official would view Facebook and its technology as a force multiplier?

The Navy has started to develop its own take on the Defense Departmentwide social media policy for the Navy and Marine Corps released in February. Navy Department Chief Information Officer Rob Carey said in a blog post on March 26 that he expected the service's policy to be released real soon.

Carey said in his post -- a must read, as far as I am concerned -- that he is "a strong proponent for the use of Internet-based collaborative tools" but emphasized access to social media by everyone in the Navy carries with it "the responsibility to ensure that certain measures are taken to keep our networks and our people safe."

This means, he wrote, that "users must protect their information online, be aware of who and what they interact with, and abide by existing regulations on ethics, operational security and privacy."

In other words, Carey expects grownups to act like grownups online.

How refreshing.