It's Twitter again, this time military style

It seems that social networks aren't for people who like to posts about their lives, those that like to stalk them, or even those that like to sell homes on twitter (as seen in a different blog posts) now the military is getting some action using social networks

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30519203/

The way the pentagon is using facebook, for example, is for the connections that everyone has to each other. If one person friends a recruiter, the hope is that the recruiter will eventually be able to friend that person's friend. This will come on and create a network where one recruiting befriends a bunch of people, all stemming from the first person that friended the recruiter. It is a bit different than how facebook is traditionally used, since usually we initially friend those people that we know and friend others by meeting them in real life then finding them on facebook. The pentagon's facebook recruiting makes the friended process more distance and informal.

The Pentagon's recruitment initiative is nothing more than a larger spread of disease that we first witness on the first day of class. It starts from a source and keeps spreading to those that become connected to that source and the process just keeps repeating. I guess you have to admire the Pentagon for coming into the 21st century and realizing open social networking sites can become a jackpot for getting people to learn about the military and possibly recruiting them. It makes it a more informal process as well as a simpler one.

It's very interesting to see how the military is leveraging social networking to recruit people. Obviously it takes more effort to keep updating their facebook/twitter pages but I think it will be worth their time as they will likely recruit a much larger percentage of people exposed to these facebook pages versus regular advertisement. I'd love to see the effect that facebook and twitter makes in their recruiting process quantified in a year or two's time.

My question is where do you draw the line in what types of groups are allowed to join these social networking sites that typically stick to traditional marketing? The obvious advantage to these websites is that the "distance" between any two people with an internet connection is effectively reduced to a mouse click, allowing a far reaching network in a very short amount of time. The danger is that less well-intentioned groups can also spread their junk at a much higher rate to a large number of people. For example, multi-level-marketing groups promising virtually unattainable results can grow their schemes much more quickly with a social networking site. This is not only a waste of the people's time but also creates an inefficiency in the economy with the magnitude depending on the size of the scheme. Currently, this isn't occurring on a large scale but if people start seeing the successes of the military in their recruiting process using social networks, other private entities with more malicious intentions will see this as an opportunity to spread more quickly. This makes them more dangerous than they traditionally are. Some can argue that this is a slippery slope fallacy but it could happen right?

Currently, this isn't occurring on a large scale but if people start seeing the successes of the military in their recruiting process using social networks, other private entities with more malicious intentions will see this as an opportunity to spread more quickly. This makes them more dangerous than they traditionally are. Some can argue that this is a slippery slope fallacy but it could happen right?

stseng has a valid question, but I don't think this worst-case scenario will ever come true because of the features that popular social networks have. The biggest feature is the ability to only get contacted by people (groups, events, pages, bands, etc.) that you have already approved to contact you. Because of this, the only things that get spread virally through the network are approved (in a sense) messages. On top of that, messages that try to spread virally (invitations to listen to a band, watch a video, join a group, etc.) can only be propagated by users actively transmitting them. For these reasons, annoying/malicious messages that attempt to spread virally will be thwarted after only one cycle of transmission. The only way that a malicious message could spread in this manner would be if it was somehow able to send its message to all friends of the people that it originally started with. This has been seen on Myspace, with account passwords getting stolen by viruses, but even then, because very few users are in contact with their online friends solely through the site itself, word spreads quickly that a particular user's page has been compromised, and the user takes steps to stop the virus.

tl;dr social networks become popular because they are designed to stop annoying/malicious messages from spreading virally, so the worst-case scenario presented won't happen

Perhaps one of the best parts about this is that each node that the military selects to add to the network is "desirable." By viewing pictures, birthdates, gender, and other information the military can target whatever type of individual that they desire. And each person probably has enough friends that you the tree can keep expanding with each iteration, without too much overlap between newly selected nodes.

One thing that the military can take advantage of is strong triadic closure. If there are two close friends and the recruiter befriends one of them, the likelihood of adding the other friend increases. Sounds like a good way to go about things.