Social networking available to military

How important is it to be active in a social network? Apparently, the Pentagon decided it’s important enough to issue a new policy that allows anyone on the military’s non-classified computer network to access Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

The U.S. Department of Defense researched this decision for months before deciding that it’s important to “maximizing the capabilities” of the Internet, said Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III in a DoD press release. Still, access to other sites is still denied, such as pornography and hate crime-related.

Photo credit C. Todd Lopez, image from the United States Army Web site.

So what does this mean? Military personnel can now stay in better communication with family and friends. This new access will be better for the military in terms of recruiting. Think about how a soldier can now connect with others through Facebook or Twitter. Through these connections, people who were interested in enlisting might feel spurred to actually do it.

Another site that can now be accessed? YouTube.

These are all nice concessions for our soldiers (as well as everyone else affected by the change). Social networking is good for people, especially for those troops who are overseas and haven’t been home in a long time. I don’t know the full details of the policy, but I wonder what the policy is for troops in high conflict areas such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Is the DoD concerned about accidental information leaks? After all, people can inadvertently reveal information they didn’t mean to, post something they regret later or tweet something their employer doesn’t agree with.

Unless I’m misunderstanding the way the network works (which is likely since I have no military connections).

Obama answers questions on YouTube

The current administration has been great at connecting with people. Anyone can follow the White House @whitehouse on Twitter. There are a number of blogs on the White House official Web site. The White House also has accounts with Flickr, Facebook, Vimeo, MySpace, LinkedIn, iTunes podcasts (all of which are free) and, yes, YouTube.

After his State of the Union address last Wednesday, President Obama agreed to a YouTube interview where he answered questions submitted by YouTube users and voted on. Unsurprisingly, health care was a huge topic. So was banks, help for small businesses, and clean energy. Obama did very well, which isn’t unexpected since the man is good at speaking.

Steve Grove moderates the interview with President Obama

He’s really good a speaking. Obama used the word “hope” a lot in his answer about how to move forward his health care bill. Normally, hope is a great word, an uplifting word. In his answer, the word hope signified what Obama wanted to happen, but didn’t necessarily know was going to happen. It has been said that Scott Brown winning the election in Massachusetts was the final nail in the health care reform coffin. However, a full year after Obama took office, there was no guarantee that the bill was going to pass any time soon.

Another sleight of speech I noticed was in response to help for small businesses. There were many great proposals given, but the fact of the matter is that a large majority of proposals entered into Congress die in Congress. Proposals mean nothing unless Obama is confident that they will pass.

The YouTube interview is worth watching — as are the other videos the White House administration has posted on the Web site, YouTube and iTunes — especially in case anyone out there decides to submit a question the next time Obama does something like this. And he will. One thing about the president is that he truly enjoys reaching out, answer questions and attempting to bring some transparency to the White House.

President on YouTube

After dealing with his first State of the Union address, complete with Democrats applauding cheerfully as if they had gotten something done this last year and Republicans sitting gloomily as if to say they were going to make things as difficult as possible, President Obama has an equally difficult speech tonight: Obama will be answering questions on YouTube.

After the State of the Union address YouTube had opened up submissions for questions. Of all the submissions viewers vote on the best ones and the questions with the most votes will be asked.

The interview will be tonight at 8 p.m. EST and General Wesley Clark, economist Nouriel Roubini, Newsweek Editor Fareed Zakari and NASA climatologist Jim Hansen will be on hand for commentary.

Obama is reaching out to the public in a way that might not have been successful just three years earlier. More and more of the administration’s interviews and news conferences are put online.

Will this close interaction with the public work? Letting the viewers vote on the best questions may work to weed out the weak ones and keep the hard-hitting questions that have the most bearing on the most people. Or it can turn into a free-for-all.

Tonight, I’ll recap how it goes.