Social Media Goes to War
Jan 11, 2010 | | Employee Engagement, Employer Branding, Social Media/Social Recruiting, Uncategorized
MQ-1 Predator drone Photo: JimNtexas on flickr.com
The New York Times reports that the Air Force uses social media to direct ground forces battling in Afghanistan.
“ ‘It’s mostly through the chat rooms — that’s how we’re fighting these days,’ said Col. Daniel R. Johnson, who runs the intelligence centers.
“He said other analysts, mostly enlisted men and women in their early 20s, studied the hundreds of still images and phone calls captured each day by U-2s and other planes and sent out follow-up reports melding all the data.
“Mr. Bigham, a Raytheon executive (they designed the system – Ed.), said the new system would help speed that process. He said it would also tag basic data, like the geographic coordinates and the chat room discussions, and alert officials throughout the military who might want to call up the videos for further study.”
I bring this up for the benefit of those employers who ban social media in the workplace as a distraction. Yes, on the face of it an employee commenting on a photo on Facebook isn’t working on the latest quarterly report. But s/he is learning (through playing) how to use a collaborative platform with others scattered throughout the area or even the world. And, as we can see in this article, perhaps even learning the latest in war fighting skills.
Sure, if someone spends most of the workday playing on Facebook or Twitter management needs to step in and say something. But a blanket prohibition on social media is as laughable today as banning the Internet was in 1995. Ultimately the employers had to grant access to allow workers to use productivity-enhancing applications such as e-mail and file sharing. Likewise, employers will soon realize that a workforce that collaborates across miles and time zones is far more effective than one that works in separate silos.
Drew, Christopher “Military Is Awash in Data from Drones,” New York Times, January 10, 2010
Leave a Reply