The Pentagon's on Twitter

We already knew that social networking, from Twitter to Facebook to Youtube to Myspace and all the other online communities are a great way for businesses and individuals to connect.  Nate, one of our developers, recently pointed me toward our local police's Twitter account, to help me recover my stolen bike.  Unforuntately, we did not succeed in finding my bike, but it opened my eyes to another aspect of "connecting" - allowing local authorities to connect to the people being affected by their decisions.

Today I found proof of this in a larger scale.  The Pentagon's on Twitter! (And Facebook, and Youtube!) U.S. Defense
Secretary Robert Gates says he "wants to use social media to reach young people, especially the two
million members of the U.S. military - average age about 22."  And the FBI is using social networking sites (like Facebook) to solve crime!  "The FBI says social networks also allow
them to show people what the FBI does and how they protect people from
a variety of threats."

I shouldn't be overly surprised.  It's exciting to watch sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube become less about constant communication between bored college students, and more about easy, open, accessible communication between businesses and clients, students of all ages learning from one another around the world, and now government, law enforcement, and the people.  Still, a small part of me keeps looking around for the flying cars...