Rock Creek Roundup (October 16 Edition)

Posted by: Meagen Ryan, Director of Strategy Oct 16, 2009 0 Comments

Long government URLs get shortened, the road to Gov 2.0 hits a few speed bumps, 100 lucky Twitterers are going to NASA, and the IAB tells the FTC to dump their blogger rules ASAP in this week’s version of the Rock Creek Roundup:

• Long URLs are cumbersome to work with because they can break across lines and take up too much valuable space when used in a social media environment. While link shortening services have come and gone, a new service launched by the GSA will be here to stay. The new service, located at go.usa.gov, lets government employees shorten .mil, .gov and .si.edu URLs without fear of the link abbreviation service going out of business. We think that Bev Godwin and the GSA deserve kudos for launching this forward-thinking project.
• The road to Gov 2.0 is not without its speed bumps. According to Deputy CTO for Internet Policy Andrew McLaughlin, the White House is facing a number of issues on its journey toward transparent, open government. In a speech earlier this week, McLaughlin mentioned concerns over how long commercial websites like YouTube and Flickr will allow the government channels on their sites to remain advertising-free. McLaughlin cited additional concerns about state-specific terms of use policies, Section 508 compliance, and archiving regulations.
• Were you one of the lucky Twitterers who got the invite to the NASA Tweetup? Pushing the social media envelope once again, NASA opened registrations on a first-come, first-serve basis to Twitterers interested in witnessing (and tweeting) firsthand the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center. While the lucky Twitterers are expected to pay for their travel and accommodations, they get to meet NASA staff Twitterers, shuttle technicians, and astronauts while they’re there. Awesome!
• In blogging news, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) is telling the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to get rid of the new guidelines it has established requiring bloggers to disclose their affiliations with companies, marketers, and other organizations that they’re writing about. The IAB asserts that the FTC is holding online media to one standard and offline media to another, constituting a First Amendment violation. So far, the FTC hasn’t commented, but the blogosphere is waiting to see how this will all play out. We’ll keep you posted.

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Meagen Ryan

Director of Strategy

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