Dropping Eeves; social media evolves!
6 september 2011 Plaats een reactie
I write and think about -in a sometims wild manner, sorry for that- about the possibilities social media has as a new informationchannel from battlefields. Everyone has some kind of mobile device nowadays to share their own story, including soldiers. So, the military leadership of Western countries that are involved in missions get a bit nervous aboute people at home being informed about those missions through those social media sites. Especially when this information is critical in maintaining some kind of public support.
I believe that this nervousness is unnecessary, as i pointed out in my masterthesis , some articles and several talks i gave and will be giving on the subject. And social media evolves, so while everybody is still getting a headache over twitter and facebook, what about new startups, who can instantly share information.
Take Eeve. In its simplest form, Eeve lets users take photos from their mobile and collaboratively tell a story with others in close proximity – these collaborations are what are known as ‘Eeves’.
Military use?
Military personal will shiver at the word ‘Eeve’, or ‘Eeves’, since it reminds you of eevesdropping. Loose Tweets sink fleets ay?
But what about the endless possibilities to build an almost realtime picture of a battlefield through Eeving? Not only helpfull with already existing technology to keep a realtime overview of the battlefield. It can also help countering enemy claims about certain developments, those claims are going at a fast pace as well nowadays, Taliban knows their Twitter as well.
So if you loose the geotagging for a moment (not very handy in realtime, opsec and stuff) you have a great tool to build a quick and total overview of a battlefield in pix. Good for framing if maintained the right way, good for building bridges with the homefront. (quick overview possible, if managed correctly great way of showing what the individual soldier as well as the total unit is doing ‘over there’)
What it shows
Ok, its just a wild thought and Eeve is only a startup, and a small one. But it shows the endless possibilities that social media has, and that beyond the now common sites such as Twitter, Facebook and sofort their still is a frontier of unchartered technological terrain waiting to be claimed by some group of smart whizzkids.
For the military it also shows that the military must be constantly aware of anything new on social media, because at the current pace, policies focussing on certaing types of social media are outdated before they hit the stores. It shows that being social media savvy will mean not only keeping updated on developments, but also that you must focus on the use of social media, not on the technology itself. Maybe the social media handbook of the US ARMY has to be even more of a general guideline as it is today and not turn into a big book of how to work with every different type of social media. For the netherlands, which doesnt have such a great handbook yet, something to think about.
Exiting times!