Government Agencies Tweet @ Twitter
Submitted by blakeley on Sun, 2008-03-02 15:46.
While updating my Twitter account recently, I noticed that womenshealth.gov created their own Twitter account and added me to their network. Kudos to the government agencies who are jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon and getting their information out to the community!
That got me wondering what other government agencies have created Twitter accounts, so I did some hunting and found a previous FGI blog entry and an article from CNET News stating that NASA wants to tackle Web 2.0 initiatives in order to "save itself from turning into a dinosaur in the Internet age". It took awhile, but I finally found the official NASA Twitter account, which I stumbled upon via the NASA Edge website and their Twitter page.
The U.S. Department of State created a dipnote Twitter account for alerting users to new posts on their DIPNOTE Blog.
Many non-profit organizations, such as the American Red Cross, created "tweet" alerts during the recent tornado outbreaks in the south.
The Sunlight Foundation is "tweeting" public laws as they are signed.
And of course, FGI is on Twitter as well!
Even Presidential candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton update their Twitter accounts. I can't find one for John McCain, but it looks like Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul joined the Twitter bandwagon too.
If you find any other government agencies using Twitter, please post a comment to let everyone know.
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great post!
This is both interesting and useful. Thanks.
Thanks and You're Welcome!
:-) Glad to be of service. It was fun finding all those twitters!
Meanwhile at the Dinosaurs...
Some agencies are embracing Web 2.0 to communicate, but many others are going in the opposite direction by shutting themselves off. Several large departments have blocked all internal access to YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, and countless other sites: http://www.dotgovwatch.com/?/archives/29-Agencies-Block-YouTube,-Shoot-T...
Blocking internal access
So I've heard! When I couldn't find the NASA Twitter account at first, I thought it was because they blocked Twitter access on NASA employee computers! Here is the article where I heard about that.
Gov Gab Now "Tweeting"
Thanks to this post, Gov Gab, the blog of the U.S. General Services Administration's Office of Citizen Services and Communication, now has a twitter account. You can see our most recent blog posts at http://www.twitter.com/govgab.
I'm so glad you read this
I'm so glad you read this post and decided to get a twitter account! That's awesome. :-D
More Gov't Twittering
This is great! In late June I created a full post of government twitter feeds.
Currently, 5 government agencies who blog have expanded into Twitter. And, government officials, states, health departments and more. Very exciting time to be in government communications.
Cheers,
Alex
gov agencies on facebook
has anyone compiled a list of government agencies on facebook?
Aids.gov on Facebook
Jermarion, you ask an interesting question. I'm not aware of any such listing. We don't compile a list and it seems like usa.gov doesn't keep one either.
But at least one government entity has a Facebook fan page. You can find theirs at http://www.facebook.com/pages/AIDSgov/8039057811. It's got 61 fans and has links to videos as well as the aids.gov blog. The fans appear to come from a number of walks of life, so it's not just government employees and librarians. :-)
I found the facebook page by searching usa.gov for the term "facebook." This search mostly pulled up press releases about the infamy of facebook, but one probably could compile a list of gov't facebook profiles from the search results.
If you start a directory of gov't Facebook/MySpace/Your Social Network Here pages/profiles, please let us know and we'll link to you.
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"And besides all that, what we need is a decentralized, distributed system of depositing electronic files to local libraries willing to host them." -- Daniel Cornwall, tipping his hat to Cato the Elder for the original quote.
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