Which Government Agencies Are Tweeting?

When Twitter and Facebook got their start over the past decade, they became the epitome of social networking. People could connect with old and new friends and find out just what they were up to at any given moment. Pretty soon, companies saw these locales as an opportunity to reach out to potential consumers, a strategy that proved so effective that one very big, very important entity decided to dip its toe into the waters of social networking: the United States Government. But to what purpose?

To be fair, government agencies are doing exactly what they think their constituents want them to do: provide as much transparency for the inner workings of the government with daily, if not more frequent, updates. Ideen, LLC recently took a sample of over 30 government agencies with Twitter accounts and cross compared them for frequency of updates and the information each one contained. Here's what we found:

● Most agencies tweet at a low to medium frequency (less than 5 tweets per day, sometimes not even every day)

●Agencies that tweet frequently (more than 5 tweets per day) are more likely to have Twitter accounts for sub-offices and departments

●Amongst the highest ranked organizations in terms of volume of tweets were the Department of Agriculture, CDC, Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, and the Department of the Army

●The lowest volume of tweets came from the Department of Health and Human Services, FDA, and the Department of Justice

●Nearly all government agencies tweet links to external blogs or news updates, with only a few actually posting information directly to Twitter.

A brief look into agency Facebook pages indicated a limited level of public interaction, serving as another webpage instead of a social network.

We live in an age of information overload. Everywhere we turn, there's another newspaper, another blog, another podcast, all vying for our immediate attention and consumption. Is it not strange, then, that a Newsweek study taken this year showed that 29 percent of Americans could not name the Vice President? America undoubtedly suffers from a serious problem of T.M.I. (Too Much Information), and now the government wants in.

So what does all of this information tell us about the U.S. Government’s attempts to break into mainstream social networking? Quite simply, they have a ways to go. It’s not that these agencies are not making a concerted effort; to the contrary, they’re working harder than they’re given credit for. The main draw to social networking sites is actual interaction, so as far as reaching the public is concerned, Twitter may be these agencies’ best bet. Perhaps there is no magic formula for piquing public interest in Veterans Affairs or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but the information is there, and it is being distributed in the most generationally relevant way possible.