Government Websites Adopt Social Networking

We already knew that presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama had Twitter sites where they were keeping supporters updated on their campaigns. But it was recently brought to our attention that numerous U.S. government agencies and departments are maintaining Twitter pages featuring "tweets" with the latest news on their governmental goings-on.

In fact, there's actually a U.S. Government Twitter Fan Wiki that contains an alphabetical list of government agencies as well as links to their Twitter sites. Via Twitter, you can now keep up with the latest happenings at such disparate government departments as the U.S. Army, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our Congress is even using Twitter to keep Web 2.0-savvy Americans apprised of the latest votes in the Senate.

And government agencies have embraced other online social networking tools. NASA EDGE now has Facebook and MySpace pages as well as a blog. Argonne National Laboratory offers a NEOS Wiki, which it describes as "the ubiquitous online source for optimization."

Are you hoping that we've created a research guide on the government's use of social networking technology? Well, to be honest, this phenomenon is so novel that we haven't even thought to create subject guides about government blogs, wikis, and "tweets." But perhaps this is the new, hip, user-friendly form of government intelligence. Or an alternative to telecommunications. Let us know what you think.