U.S. Department of Defense Goes Social...Yes, Really!

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a new policy which allows all users of unclassified computers in the .mil domain access to popular social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube among others. This change in policy effectively reverses the previous ban on accessing these types of sites - a ban that had been in place for nearly three years. In embracing the new policy, the department also launched its own social media hub, a blog-like site complete with live Twitter feeds, Tweetmeme buttons and "share on Facebook" links. And in case you thought they weren't serious, it's also worth noting (as spotted by the New York Times) that news of this announcement broke on the Twitter feed of Price Floyd, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, and not via a traditional press release.

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Reversing the Ban

In May 2007, the Pentagon blocked access to 12 popular social media sites from .mil computers citing "bandwidth concerns," reports the Navy Times. In August 2009, the Marine Corps banned the same sites, this time citing security issues. Other services also began blocking social media sites at the direction of various commanders in certain locations. Sometimes those bans even led to the shutdown of personal blogs.

Unfortunately for military personnel, these blocking measures forced troops to use their own personal computers in order to communicate with friends and family via Facebook, Twitter and other social media services while stationed in the U.S. When deployed, they had to visit Internet cafes in order to gain access to these sites.

New Policy States: No More Blacklist

The new policy, announced Friday, seeks to balance the needs of troops to connect with their loved ones via social media while also maintaining an appropriate level of security. As the policy goes into effect, the DoD will require all military units to remove the social sites from their internal "blacklist." According to the Times, Lindy Kyzer, an advisor to the Army's Chief of Public Affairs on social media issues, said that all the units will be now be required to open access to social networking sites initially. Afterwards, if any commander does need to block sites for security purposes, those blocks can only be temporary. She continues, saying that the "DoD is moving away from the silly notion of having 'blacklisted' social media sites and saying, 'We're not going to lay down the hammer and tell you where you can and cannot go, we're going to mitigate risk as it comes."

In the blog post on the DoD's social media hub, service members are reminded that while the new policy opens up access to Facebook and the like, other sites like those containing gambling, pornography and hate-crime, are still banned. Also, personnel are advised that "everyone has a responsibility to protect themselves and their information online, and existing regulations on ethics, operational security, and privacy still apply."

The Social Sites of the DoD

Elsewhere on the DoD Social Media Hub, are links to other DoD social media sites including Twitter feeds for Price Floyd and the department itself, its Facebook page, Flickr account, YouTube account, uStream account and more. Blog posts on the site focus on how the department uses new media and one even points to a free iPhone app that combines Army technology news, social media and job postings in one location.

Those interested in reading the new policy in its entirety can do so here. In addition, the Department of Defense has also launched a SlideShare channel where they've posted several presentations about the new policy.

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Action Streams: A New Idea for Social Networks

Walled gardens are already under attack because of the ease of sending content like messages and photos from one website to another. Sites that don't let content flow in and out freely, when that's what users want, are fighting against the powerful tide of the internet.

Now a new proposal aims to take things to the next level and send a payload of item-type specific action options along with every piece of content that gets shot across the internet. A loose body of innovators from some of the biggest social networking companies online have begun discussing an addition to the Activity Streams standard format called an Action Stream. That could blow the world of social networking wide open, allowing users to try out other competing social networks without losing their ability to interact with friends on Facebook, for example.

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Earlier this month social software designer Adrian Chan offered up a proposal for what he called Action Streams.

Action streams would not only share status/activity update meta-data but also permit updates to function as actions. For example, an invitation update posted in twitter could be accepted in Buzz. The vision for action streams thus involves a distributed and decentralized ecosystem of coupled action posts, rendered by third party stream clients and within participating social networks.

This idea was added tonight to the Activity Streams wiki where it will be discussed by the community building the Activity Streams format. The standard types of actions that can be taken in regard to content items of the same categories on Amazon and Facebook were listed as prior art. The discussion has just begun, and data interoperability isn't something that everyone at big social networks agrees is in their best short-term interests. These idea are exciting and are supported by a substantial number of people, though.

The Activity Streams discussion is participated in by engineers from companies like Google, Facebook, Nokia, Yahoo and others. Chris Messina, who joined Google in January, is one of the key voices, and semantic web builder Monica Keller, who left MySpace for Facebook last month, appears to be taking an even more active role in the effort than she had before.

If Activity Streams with Actions can be implemented effectively, that would mean not only that you could participate in any social network you choose and still read messages from outside that network - you could also interact with them from those other networks as well. RSVP to Facebook event invites, tag yourself in photos, etc. without visiting Facebook, but from within whichever social network won your heart through its superior features or design.

You could interact with your friends on Google Buzz from inside Facebook, or from a social network that doesn't even exist yet. More and better social networks would spring into existence because the ability to see and interact with friends would no longer be a scarce resource hoarded by the biggest social networks.

If you think social networking is a world-changing phenomenon today, imagine what it might be like if interoperable social networks sprung up like wildflowers. It's one thing to make content available in a standard format - but making some basic actions transmittable and standardized would make the prospect of communication across networks all the more real and powerful. That could mean an environment ripe for innovation and a better experience every day for users.

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Google Challenges Bing's Photosynth; Adds User Photos to Street View

Google Street View has made a few headlines at RWW lately - once for getting itself into hot water in Europe and once, notably, for bringing Street View's photo-tour features into retail outlets.

Now, we've learned that Street View will also begin to feature user-submitted photographs. According to a recent Google Lat Long blog post, "We began integrating user photos into Street View last year. User photos allow you to view locations from entirely new perspectives, whether through the eyes of a talented photographer with a knack for capturing architectural detail, or simply taken from locations we couldn't get to... We're making it easier to navigate through these images in a way that should feel similar to how you're used to exploring within Street View."

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Users can submit pictures from Picasa, Panoramio and Flickr that show different views, times of day or pedestrian-only areas. Here's an example of what the interface looks like; the square in the top right corner indicates there are user-submitted images for that area.

And here is the photo navigation interface. Users can also navigate through photos using new click-and-drag controls to see images from nearby areas, or different angles or crops of the same area.

Some have speculated that Google has chosen to highlight and integrate this feature because of competition with Bing. The Next Web recently called Microsoft's Photosynth, a similar product launched in 2008 and integrated into Bing Maps, "the killer app of the Bing suite" that differentiates Bing from Google in a positive way.

"The feature," wrote Jacob Friedman , "displays collections of photos stitched together into a panorama[...] The results, to put it bluntly, can be spectacular."

While Google's offering may not have the 3D-esque quality of Photosynth, allowing for more creative images and photos from a larger geographical area to be shared in Street View is a smart move for the company. Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Fotobabble: Add Audio to Your Pics

We've recently come across an app that literally brings its users "talking pictures."

Essentially, Fotobabble attaches an audio caption to any image you can upload. It's a cute, fun way to share and narrate photos with friends, and could even be useful for certain kinds of online businesses - for example, photographers who wanted to explain more information about a particular shot or online retailers who wanted to give potential customers details about a product. Can Fotobabble accomplish these tasks better with audio than conventional text-based captions do now? Read on and tell us what you think.

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Here's our example. It took just a few seconds to create.

Currently, users can choose to share their creations across a wide variety of social networks or email; however, autosharing is not built in. The app is available as a web app for PC/Mac/etc. and as an iPhone app.

We do wish that Fotobabble would let users audio-caption pics from Facebook, Flickr photo streams or elsewhere on the Web. Ensuring ownership would be easy enough, as well, through Flickr's API or Facebook Connect.While we're on that subject, account creation should be possible through Facebook Connect or Twitter OAuth. Ideally, we'd also want to be able to create slide shows and sets or groups of pics.

What do you think: Can you see yourself using Fotobabble? If so, how would you use it? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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