The CIA has embraced the Twittersphere in the spirit of openness and transparency - they tell us that they will share their #unclassified content with us. Fabulous said 615,000+ followers and the estimated 250,000+ according to The Guardian who retweeted the first tweet. However, this fills me with as much disappointment as when I realised that MI5 were publically advertising career opportunities... no more will I wander around Cambridge waiting for that tap on my shoulder to ask if I've ever thought about working for my Country. "Yes, count me in, although I don't like flying, hot countries, spiders, volcanoes or danger." Although we can still merrily engage in conspiracy chatter about the #unclassified content the CIA is not sharing with us, I do feel they've spoilt the mystique!
So should all organisations have a social media presence? Well these days the answer is probably yes, if they can keep it current, relevant, useful, on target with objectives and the mission of the organisation. Even the British Monarchy is following an integrated social media strategy with regular updates of what the royals are up to, photos from events, information on celebrations and so on... They've sent out over 18,000 tweets and have 668,000 followers - probably from a younger generation. When you consider how unpopular the British Royals were after Diana's death, and the current unpopularity of the Spanish Royals, social media is clearly a great channel for them to reach new global fans from this generation of digital natives.
Equally, despite my disappointment in state secrets being slightly less shrouded in mystery, there is a case for security services to be using social media to communicate what they do to protect citizens and to explain their strategic mission - however don't expect the SAS to be posting selfies of themselves "going through the window right now" anytime soon.
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