My wife is a retired IT Security Specialist who worked for NOAA/NWS and won several awards for her work. After seeing the news about CENTCOM's twitter/YouTube hack she asked me why a military organization is on those social media outlets. I could not answer her question.

What say current military folk?

Disclaimer: I am an old fart (retired in 1991), but am on the internet a lot (WAY too much on texags my wife tells me) and have a facebook page that I rarely post to. I am "facebook friends" with a lot of family and friends, but I do not do YouTube or twitter (too lazy to learn the twitter "language").

Great recruiting and public affairs tool. I think the quality of military journalism (Air Force Link, Army News Service, etc as opposed to Military Times) has gone up significantly in the last 10 years, and I think that's in large part because of social media giving it a louder voice and a wider distribution.

I have the same question.....

Good response, but I still question why CENTCOM needs to use those venues. They are not in the business of recruiting and PR for the Air Force.

quote:

---

DoD says it is integral, but for the most part, no harm no foul.

---

Not sure I understand your comment. It seems to me that having two of your "social media" outlets hacked in the way they were IS harmful and qualifies as a "foul".

One could say that Twitter, Facebook, etc could be used to connect to the younger generations, and, thus a recruiting tool. But CENTCOM doesn't 'recruit' as the Army, Navy, AF, Marines, Coast Guard does. I see what NormanAg is stating - more of a liability these days than it is an asset.

Perhaps to engage in twitter wars (Nato vs Taliban): http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/18/world/asia/afghanistan-twitter-war/

It's actually kind of funny.

But I suspect it's also easier to throw out a few tweets daily than hold a press conference daily.

Having active social media accounts helps give the image of transparency. Besides, I'd rather hackers spend time hacking a Facebook account instead of something more important.