US Army Recruits on Facebook and Twitter

WASHINGTON — Seeking to reach out to the younger audience, the US Army has launched a page on the world's largest social online network Facebook and Twitter, a free social messaging utility that has become an internet sensation.

"Young people today don't watch the evening news. They're friends [who] are sharing information through Twitter, or Facebook," Army spokeswoman Lindy Kyzer told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Tuesday, April 28.

"If we have no presence on those spaces, then we're not telling the army's story."

Kyzer said the Army's Online Social Media Division was created in March and its official Facebook page was launched last week.

She noted that the Facebook page, which now has more than 8,000 fans, has entries from wives of soldiers seeking advice from other military families, youth getting ready to enlist and veterans sending prayers to troops.

Founded in 2004, Facebook's membership was initially restricted to students of the Harvard University.

It was later expanded to other universities in the US and later to any student with a university email address from all over the world.

Facebook has grown to more than 70 million users worldwide to be the second social networking website after MySpace.

Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time that has grown in popularity in recent months.

The US Navy's Pacific Command has its own Facebook page with plenty of photos.

General Ray Odierno, who commands US forces in Iraq, has a Facebook page with more than 5,000 friends.

The Air Force has also launched its Twitter service.

Restrictions

Kyzer believes that once the army re-taps into Twitter service it would attract more fans than Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher who has one million audience on the San Francisco micro-blogging service.

"If he has a million followers, why can't we? We're the US Army."

The Army's Twitter effort has gotten off to a slow start with about 5,000 followers since its launch last year.

Many blame that on Pentagon computer security restrictions, set out in 2007, which limit soldiers' access to networking sites.

The rules bar soldiers in war zones, including Iraq or Afghanistan, from accessing Facebook or Twitter on computer networks at military bases.

They are also blamed for stifling blogging by soldiers from the battlefront, even as some senior commanders write blogs or maintain a Facebook page.

"It's unfortunate and makes things more difficult in the deployed environment, but we have great programs set up so that you have Internet cafes in deployed situations and things like that," Kyzer said.

But they argued that the rules only require that blogs are not written without the knowledge of superiors.

"If you're blogging in a deployed setting, as a soldier, writing as a soldier, you should let your commander know that.

"The commander needs to know what you're up to."