Feds Go A Twitter -ing

10/06/2008

Unclesam Question: How do you tell when something is beginning to go main stream?
Answer: Or one answer .. look at the most conservative. For some that might be the federal government.

When it comes to the hot new social media tactic .. micro blogs a la Twitter, it's not a surprise that politicians have been tweeting for months including the presidential candidates. Take a peek at the list that Alexandra Rampy developed. I can't help but wonder what is going on in the other side of those tweets. Are they influencing or making a difference? 

Last Friday I had the honor of chatting with the smart women over at Media BullsEye Roundtable Sarah Wurrey and Jen Zingsheim. Our conversation focused on social media and one topic was .. the P Word and Girlfriend it's not pie but Procrastination. Are blogs, Twitter, social networks a form of procrastination? Might it be a productive form of procrastination .. one where you can learn while playing following the posts or tweets?

My procrastination resulted in this list of 20 Federal Government Tweets for you to explore. I found some to be little more than boring news flashes of data; but a few are rich with personality as well as information. If you need a bit of Monday morning procrastination to jump start your week .. this one is for you!

1. EEOC - Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

2. U.S. Army 

3. NASA NASA

4. USJFCOM - U.S. Joint Force Command

5. Securities and Exchange Commission

6. Homeland Security

7. House Floor - updates from floor of U.S. House of Representatives

8. NSF - National Science Foundation

9. Food Safety Information Center

10. TSA Blog Team

11. Senate Floor - updates from the floor of the Senate

12. OPM - Office of Personal Management

13. Peace Corps

14. Federal Citizen Information Center

National_women_health_info 15. National Women's Health Information Center - the graphic is NWHIC's avatar. Love It!

16. State Department Travel

17. Food Saftey Information Center

18. Official Portal of the U.S. Government in Spanish

19. Office Portal of the U.S. Government

20. National Marine Santuaries

Just for fun .. What is your Twitter Grade? Mine (tobydiva) is 96.9 - Rank #1,145 out of 39,942.

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Comments

Mainstream indeed. I had no clue these departments were on twitter.

Posted by: Brett Tilford on Oct 6, 2008 3:44:41 PM

Tee hee. I bet most of these are unofficial agency twitterers, because the official process is completely unable to handle tweeting, much less macro-tweeting (=blogging). I fully expect a formal reprimand once the eminences grises find me.

Posted by: NSF on Oct 6, 2008 4:23:32 PM

@Bret and all -- according to @NSF there is a good bet that most are not sanctioned Twitter accounts. One of the challenges with Twitter .. linking to a site and seemingly appropriate tweets .. does not make an approved "Twitter".

Lessons that we learned from Exxon. I got caught in the excitement. Sorry if I misled anyone.

Posted by: Toby on Oct 6, 2008 5:10:28 PM

With all this talk about Fed's twittering (albeit unofficially), twitter in congress, etc. - it would be nice to see some of the candidates to a Q&A on twitter.

Sure, they have broadcast feeds on Twitter, but they really want to generate citizen activism, wouldn't a weekly twitter session break some great ground?

Posted by: jon burg on Oct 6, 2008 5:25:57 PM

It seems that everyone is on Twitter these days.My Twitter Grade: 79 - Rank #7,737 out of 40,629

Posted by: Tom At The Home Business Archive on Oct 7, 2008 7:55:32 AM

Nice post.
Thanks for sharing.

Posted by: Natural SEO Services on Oct 7, 2008 8:01:25 AM

Nice post.
Thanks for sharing with us.

Posted by: Search Engine Optimization Services on Oct 8, 2008 6:40:13 AM

Wow, look at how many Twitter accounts since you wrote this! I went to calculate my Twitter grade (curious) and got Twitter Grade: 98.7 - Rank #524 out of 40,994

Posted by: Valeria Maltoni on Oct 8, 2008 12:56:36 PM

Nice post.
Thanks for sharing with us.

Posted by: Professional Seo on Oct 10, 2008 9:08:07 AM

Everyone is on Twitter these days. It's wonderful to see affiliate marketers, politicians, or just average web fans, all documenting their lives through microblogging. My Twitter name is MLRebecca; my grade is a 71, which means I need to get to tweeting even more! Thanks for posting!

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