Tracing the first official U.S. military blogs

It's amazing how late it all got started, isn't it? I think your timeline is on the mark and you'll be hard pressed to find "official" military blogs that actually look like blogs until the late 2007 early 2008 timeframe. I think it points to the fact that it took that long for the Department of Defense to figure out how to talk in a social media construct. The notion of feedback, conversation, and independent, candid voices took awhile. To their credit, there are many in the corporate world who are STILL trying to figure it out. And I believe there is something to be said for listening/participating before launching your own blog. It's what DoD did and it's what I did when I launched the Army's blog outreach program.

Thanks for the post - it brings back good memories of the days not so long ago when we were pushing to move the stodgy DoD community forward in social media!

-Lindy Kyzer

Thanks for your comment!

You are right about many in the corporate world still trying to figure it out.

It's interesting to compare with the BBC, which as a media organisation you would expect to be ahead of the DoD. And the BBC was experimenting with blog-like structures as early as 2001, and doing some stuff during the 2004 U.S. election. But it still wasn't until the end of 2005 and into 2006 that they started launching a dedicated blog network.

I think there was concern at the BBC and elsewhere that blogs might be a passing Internet fad which might not warrant dedicated resources (and of course various other well-documented issues along the lines of bloggers vs journalists, professionals vs amateurs etc).

As it has worked out, while new Internet genres have certainly emerged (social networking, Twitter etc) the participatory elements pioneered online by blogging have remained a fundamental part of these evolutions and hence the new media culture.

Getting hierarchical, bureaucratic, one-to-many, and large organisations to understand that new culture and then adapt to it was always going to be, and remains, a challenge.

But I hear you've left that job in the hands of somebody else! All the best for the next adventure.
Dan

Daniel,
The first official military blog was actually the original DoDLive http://dodlive.blogspot.com/2008/04/going-live.html

I started this as an extention of our DoDLive Bloggers Roundtable which was our first foray into the New Media environment for the DoD New Media Directorate. Our first effort was to engage and be accepted by the existing Milblog Community that was evolving from the works of folks like Colby Buzzell, J.P. Borda, Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal, Greyhawk of the Mudville Gazette, Matt Burden and Uncle Jimbo of Blackfive.net, John Donovan at Castle Argghhh!, and Ward Carroll at Military.com.

Our intent was to first provide them the opportunity to engage with leaders on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and then find ways to support and extend those engagements. That lead to our DoDLive concept and the first blog. That first blog was to prove the concept which led to DoDLive.mil which now supports ArmyLive.mil, AirForceLive.mil, NavyLive.mil and offering up the platform for others to begin official blogs.

It may appear to have started late and to be a bit behind, but for those of us here at the beginning it has been a wild ride. And we've only just begun.

Thanx for the post.

Jack

Jack,
Thanks for the information - it's great to have some more of the detail filled in. I'm not sure you've convinced me you beat the Dept of the Navy to the punch though ;)

Yeah, ya got me on that. The DoN CIO and the Chief of Engineers' blogs preceeded our blogspot blog. I had been pushing for several months to get a blog platform online as others were asking for the capabilities. Now that you have me thinking about it another that preceeded us was also Navy, The Destroyermen: http://destroyermen.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-03-24T10%3A00%3A00-10%3A00&max-results=5 which the Navy was trying to shut down, and succeeded temporarily, but we, PACOM, and US Navy Pacific, were able to change their minds. I remember the DoN CIO published his blog but it was several months before we knew about it finding it through a Chips magazine article. I worked with the Corps of Engineers in developing their blog, but actually thought we published before them, but the Web shows different, doesn't it.

You've asked a great question and perhaps this is a good place to think through and capture what actually happened.

I'll be thinking about this and back soon. I'm also interested in any research findings in your course of study you'd be willing to share. One of the other things I could not get done was the research to help explain what was happening. I'm still looking ...

Jack

Daniel,

You are exploring the potential for social and internet networking which I respect and search as much as possible. But we might also look into the connection between that forum and the person networking domain. I also see a great potential for the virtual worlkd, i.e. secondlife.

For our veterans and current returnees, along with their partners and families, the "issues" started in the "real world" (whatever that is!!) and at the personal level. Is anyone interested in or researching the possibility of linking blogs, forums and tele-counseling to community level, peer oriented and peer run discussion groups for PTSD?

www.ptsdanonymous.org