Nepal earthquake – Facebook safety check, Google public alerts #smem

Today, a 7.8 earthquake with multiple aftershocks hit Nepal. In the past, Google and Red Cross offered the opportunity with their apps to check in on people and to mark oneself with “I’m ok”. When you search on Google for Nepal earthquake, the site displays a public alert in bright orange featuring the main pieces of

The social media dance around the VP pick

On Friday night the news broke, that the Romney campaign was planning to reveal the vice-president in a live TV covered event at 9:05am the next day. Within a few hours however, all major news-outlets stated “Mitt Romney picks Paul Ryan”. There was no question mark, no speculation. Only these plain statements – quoting sources

Facebook lessons tweeted from GSA’s #SocialGov event

I couldn’t keep my eyes off the #socialgov Twitter stream today: GSA was hosting a government-only social media day with great guest speakers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google. The participants were very generous and tweeted soundbites from the speakers. I am linking to a few tweets here to share them with others outside Twitter and

Facebook’s new roles for pages

Facebook has introduced new roles for pages (see graphic). The manager of a page can assign the following roles: Content Creator Moderator Advertiser Insight Analyst What is unclear to me is that the manager of the page does not have the same rights as the other roles and is not able to create content, edits the page,

Navy recommends LinkedIn for employees

            I came across this SlideShare presentation today via FedScoop and think it is worth sharing: The Navy recommends to use LinkedIn (I assume as opposed to Facebook) as a way to tell the story of the Navy in an online environment where professionals share information. They recognize that many thousands

White House crowdsourcing effort to understand their audiences’ social media needs

The White House has recently asked its Facebook fans and Twitter followers to provide feedback on their social media activities. As an example, Twitter users were asked to fill out a short survey (see article in InformationWeek). https://twitter.com/#!/whitehouse/status/77422988332498944 After reviewing the feedback, the White House published what they extracted from their fans and followers in

Facebook is taking over the world…

Take a look at the graphics by Vincenzo Cosenza published on the TechCrunch blog: Social networking services and their worldwide adoption in 2009 and Facebook’s explosion by 2011: (Images embedded from http://www.vincos.it/ via Techcrunch blog)

The Council of State Governments’ report on social media use

http://twitter.com/#!/InesMergel/status/78982322472501248 Some of the findings include: Facebook use: • All 50 governors are on Facebook. • More than one-third of state legislators across the country are on Facebook. • Every state has at least one legislator using the social networking site. Twitter use: • Forty-eight governors use Twitter. • More than 10 percent of state

“The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy” revisited for Government 2.0

I was having lunch with a colleague of mine today and I was talking about the first results of the three studies I am working on to understand how public managers are using social media application. One of the findings is the surprisingly low number of followers and friends government agencies have on social networking

Govt 2.0: From Tools to Policy to Convergence (crossposting)

Crossposted from Bill Greeves’ blog: As I think back over the past two years, specifically with my involvement in the world of Government 2.0, I can’t help but think its adoption has coalesced into three phases. Nearly all of us have experienced some aspect of Phase I: Tools. What is Government 2.0? How does Twitter