Municipalist

Video: Israeli New York Consulate leverages social media to engage the world

David Saranga was kind enough to answer Municipalist's questions back in January 2009 about the world's first Twitter press conference held by a government office, in this case Israel's New York Consulate.

"Since we entered Twitter, I think the definition of public diplomacy has changed," Saranga says in this video.

Saranga told Municipalist: "Our Twitter account has been an effective tool for communicating and dialoguing directly with people all over the world. Some of these people may never have had access to Israel’s messages, which we could share with them through Twitter, and now they have the ability to speak directly with the Israeli government."

State Department to Twitter: The world needs you

The U.S. State Department has apparently actually asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance downtime so that tweets from Iran can continue to the outside world following that country's sham elections this weekend, and CNN is all over it.

The irony is that the Twittersphere was burning up over the last few days with claims that CNN had ignored the Iranian election story on its networks.

The "CNN FAIL" movement now even has its own blog.

More from Reuters on State Department and Twitter.

Among the recommended Twitter users from Iran to follow: @persiankiwi, who as of this moment has more than 22,000 followers.

Continuing its enthusiastic rush to utter irrelevance, the U.S. State Department blog Dipnote is silent on the entire affair.

Chinese government finally engages its people

More great cartoons can be found at Cagle.com.

Dialogging with the Terminator

Because I am old, I remember late '70s California governor Jerry Brown taking a few questions from Johnny Carson one night, including: What do you think about nude beaches?

The governor said something like: I don't think that is worth answering, Johnny.

So, behold the new age.

Among the questions submitted for the upcoming Digg Dialogg with California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger:

• California is one of the most economically rich regions in the entire world. Why do we have massive debt and an unbalanced budget?

• Do you support same-sex marriage and do you think the GOP should become more gay-friendly?

• If you had the ability to make law three things that would "fix" California, no questions asked, what would they be and why haven't they happened yet?

• You look like a Democrat, sound like a Democrat and act like a Democrat. What makes you a Republican?

• How much can you currently bench press?

• Are you a Mac or a PC?

And, true to form:

• What is your stance on the legalization, cultivation and regulation of marijuana in the state of California?

Archive of Digg Dialoggs here.

By the way, Jerry Brown used to date Linda Ronstadt. Just throwing that in.

Update: And here it is.

Obama Web moves inspire some, but not all

Here are good sources for reviews of the Web moves by Team Obama, et. al.:

Transparency Initiatives Launched Today by White House -- Washington Post. More analysis in the Post here.

Federal government launches data.gov: "The site, managed by CIO Vivek Kundra, is intended to let businesses, organizations, and consumers access large sets of government data" -- Information Week.

Data.gov Now Live: Looks Nice But Short on Data -- Read Write Web.

Gov blog widgets: Fun for the whole family

Scroll down this page -- as of today, anyway -- and you will find several widgets from various government blogs. Such as: WhiteHouse.gov, Dipnote from the State Department; Bureau of Economic Analysis from U.S. Department of Commerce; Leadership Journal from Department of Homeland Security; MoDOT Blog from Missouri Department of Transportation; and -- drum roll please -- National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Who actually would place these things on their own blogs? Other than geeks like me, I mean. We have analyzed several of these blogs previously. Widgets for blogs are hot right now -- though Widgetbox download numbers for each of these are not high -- but communities more social in nature are hotter, and so it seems that these agencies need to have presences all over the place. And that's the right idea, I think.

100 days of WhiteHouse.gov: Where's the beef?

Jose Antonio Vargas from the Washington Post elicits some smart opinions on the state of the White House Web site. Great stuff from Andrew Rasiej, from the indispensable Personal Democracy Forum, Jim Harper of Cato Institute, Jon Henke of Next Right, and David Almacy. Such as: There is little "transparency," even after all the campaign promises; and locating basic documents can be a chore.

We have pointed out previously that upon closer inspection, WhiteHouse.gov disappoints on many counts.

But we also note Vargas quotes from David Weinberger, "a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society," who "was impressed by WhiteHouse.gov's blog, which is the centerpiece of the site."

In recent weeks, the blog has posted photos, videos and invited senior officials to blog, and he appreciates its more casual tone.

Dr. Jill Biden, a long-time educator who teaches at Northern Virginia Community College, blogged about welcoming the recipients of the 2009 Teachers of the Year award. "I hope someone reading this post might even be inspired to become a 2010, 2015, or 2020 Teacher of the Year," Biden wrote in the blog. "You won't regret it and our country needs you."

"The blogs are getting better. 'Better' means less PR-ish and more human," said Weinberger, who gave the site a B+. "They did a nice job live-blogging Earth Day, and they're letting people inside the White House occasionally post about what it's like to be there."

The blogs are getting better? Gee. And here I thought these people are already the "tech savviest administration in history."

Law enforcement: Connecting, recruiting, and solving crimes through use of social media. But not everybody is on board.

I just returned from a community meeting tonight during which a sheriff of a growing county was asked by a resident angry about a particular scary arrest in her neighborhood: Are you on Facebook? Because that's where kids are, and that's where you can reach them, she said.

Answer: Well, we have a strong Web presence, you can find anything you want about us online, etc. But no Facebook.

Web 1.0 -- shoveling out lots of stuff to the world -- is not Web 2.0 -- engaging in dialogue, listening, collaborating.

But it turns out sheriff's offices across the country are in fact jumping into the social Web:

The sheriff of Jacksonville, Florida is on Facebook. From the Florida Times-Union:

GovLoop rocks on

GovLoop, the Steve Ressler-created "Facebook for feds" now has 10,000 users, in just one year. "The premier social network for government employees" has attracted plenty of media attention and taken off like a rocket.

Details here.

Here is our Q & A with Ressler from August 2008.

The Supremes get Culbersoned

The BLT: The Blog of the Legal Times offers a terrific post about the moment when several members of the Supreme Court were accosted, sort of, by Rep. John Culberson of Texas. During a perfunctory annual hearing before a Congressonal committee, Culberson turned on his camera and pointed it at Supremes Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer, to make a point about transparency. And how the Supreme Court needs more of same, since it bans live video and live audio coverage of oral arguments:

"It's a very easy matter on the Internet," Culberson said, and to prove it, he took out a device, aimed at the justices and announced that at that very moment, their visages were being seen live on the Internet. (You can see Culberson's video at this link.) The justices were startled, but smiled for the camera (C-SPAN's cameras were also rolling.)

Check out Culberson's short video here. Here is his home on Qik.

Prediction: More members of Congress are going to be doing stuff like this.  And hopefully elected officials at all levels. I live in a county where claims of "executive session" are way too common. That would be a great time for a Culberson.

Culberson is also active on Twitter.

Hat tip: Sunlight Foundation.

Maureen Dowd re Twitter: 'Tie me up and pour honey over me'

[See three four five six seven eight updates following original post.]

The New York Times columnist colorfully adds her name to the growing list of mainstream media stars diving into the latest trend: bashing Twitter.

Dowd interviews Biz Stone and Ev Williams, Twitter's founders. Her final query:

ME: I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account. Is there anything you can say to change my mind?

BIZ: Well, when you do find yourself in that position, you’re gonna want Twitter. You might want to type out the message “Help.”

Other MSMers feeling the need in recent days to spout their Twitter disgust:

• CBS Sunday Morning's Nancy Giles.

• Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker: "If you’re looking for Eureka you won’t find it while following David Gregory’s tweets."

• Miami Herald's Leonard Pitts: "I will never Twitter you."

• New York Times's Allesandra Stanley on narcissistic tweeting journalists: "The Pokemon of the blogosphere."

• And finally, there is Washington Post funnyman Dana Milbank's recent Twitter column, in which his many errors utterly undermine his thesis.

• Update I: Overrated comic-stripper Garry Trudeau goes after Twitter too. Analysis here. Further hilarity here.

• Update II: Matt Bai at New York Times Magazine joins the party.

• Update III: The Financial Times slams Twitter for its "power to misinform" regarding the swine flu epidemic.

[Blogger Simon T. Kay replies: "I’m not sure how comfortable I am with the blind assumption that vetted, ‘establishment’ data is always preferable."]

• Update IV: Predictably partisan MSNBC-er Rachel Maddow mocks the innovative Twitter citizen's press conference run by the Israeli Consulate in New York City in December 2008: " 'The Israeli government is trying to explain a conflict that people write books about, a conflict that newspaper writers struggle to explain in 2,000 words, in 140 characters at a time,' she marveled." Here is Municipalist's Q & A with that event's organizer. [Here is video of that office's David Saranga presenting to an audience about that event, in which he replies to Maddow.]

[Further along the same ideological lines as Maddow comes this lazy hit piece on the whole Twitter press conference event from something called COMOPS Journal, which rips Twitter mainly because, it seems, it was used by Israel. Therefore it must be bad.]

• Update V: Sort-of related: Here is the fabulously-informed William Beutler on how ABC News is monitoring Twitter. To farcical results.

• Update VI is this tweet from the Washington Post's technology columnist Rob Pegoraro: "E&P story says 'a senior editor must give approval before a Post employee can Twitter.' Uh, guess I forgot to ask... " http://bit.ly/4gaqm #fb

• Update VII, June 2009: Here is the Howard Kurtz-hosted show on CNN called Reliable Sources,first showing tape of Jon Stewart ripping on Twitter, then hosting a debate between Twitter supporter Rich Sanchez of CNN and very scary guy Gregg Doyel of something called CBS Sportsline in opposition. Doyle called Twitter "the teeny-bopper-ification of America." By the way he is dressed, Doyel just rolled out bed, apparently.

"Eventually it will just become white noise," Doyel says. "We'll hear none of it ... Twitter is the pet rock of the 21st century."

Update VIII, June 2009: Rush Limbaugh says no to social media. And then complains that any Twitter account bearing his name is not him.

Go Army, beat Ashton Kutcher

The Army is Tweeting. And establishing a strong presence on Facebook.

"We know that our ability to share the Army story is shaped by how we tell it and where we tell it," said Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, who heads the Army's new Online and Social Media Division, to Stephanie Gaskell of the New York Daily News. "Using social media platforms allows us to tell our story where we know people are at and are listening." And: "We'll see where it goes," Arata said. "We're not fearful of what's out there. We really want to see what the world has to say." Gaskell's piece details the Army's efforts to attract more followers on Twitter than alleged actor and professional celebrity Ashton Kutcher.

Official Army story here. And here is the Army's brand new official blog, called Army Live.

Photo is from the Army's Flickr site: U.S. Army 1st Lt. Steve Smith talks on the radio near the scene of fighting between Iraqi security forces and renegade members of the Sons of Iraq in the Al-Fadhel neighborhood of eastern Baghdad, Iraq, March 29, 2009. Smith is assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. James Selesnick.