Social Media

Facebook is a social networking site created by Mark Zuckerberg, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It later expanded to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by workplace, school, or college. Since September 2009, Facebook has gathered more than 300 million members around the world. It is the second most visited site in the world according to Alexa Internet (after google.com).

Click here for the Facebook ACO page.

 

Twitter is a tool for social networking and microblogging which allows users to send free short messages called "tweets," using the Internet, instant messaging or SMS by any communication platform, smartphones included. Since its inception in March 2006, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as "SMS of the Internet." On March 2010, Twitter recorded a 1,500 per cent growth in the number of registered users, the number of its employees grew 500 percent, while over 70,000 registered apps have been created for the microblogging platform. 

 

Twitter offers ACO officials the ability to "tweet" text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on either ACO's or SACEUR's profile page and delivered to the subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access.

 

In addition to the imposed short and brief sentences, the main difference between Twitter and a traditional blog or Facebook is that Twitter does not invite readers to comment on posts. But it allows users to follow the ‘'tweets'' or posts of the SACEUR's activities and visits.

 

Click here for the Twitter ACO page.

 

 

Flickr is a website for sharing photos and videos. Besides being a popular website for sharing personal photos, it is also often used by professional photographers.

 

The site allows both a public and private storage. As a military official user, loading images on the site can determine the identified pictures to posts and put them in some folders in order to be tagged. (Tagging is a practice of associating freely chosen keywords to an object in order to later retrieve these objects. The tagging is thus a form of classification.)

 

The pictures upload by SHAPE PAO can be seen by everyone, forming a very large database of photos sorted by category. By default, other users can leave comments on any image they have the right to see and sometimes can add keywords to image.

 

Flickr allows SHAPE users to categorize the pictures of the SACEUR's trips and others major events concerning NATO and other military related areas. By associating them with keywords (or tags), these can then be used for targeted research, for example by location or subject especially for key word tag names such as SACEUR, NATO, SHAPE, MILITARY, etc.

 

An additional option is to participate in specific thematic groups, which exist by the thousands. It is then easy to search within groups or visually move from one photo to another.

 

The interface continuously displays what groups belong to an image, and the tags associated with them.

Flickr is useful for NATO SHAPE PAO as a service for storing and sharing images.

 

Click here for the Flickr ISAF page.