Posts in "Social Networks"

Dear Federal Reserve Bureaucrat,

Sep 30, 2011 at 12:46 PM

By Davi Barker

If you’re reading this you were probably recently hired as part of the Federal Reserve’s new social media monitoring program. Chances are you’re part of some make-work federal job placement program. You probably don’t completely understand who it is that you’re working for, and what it is that you’re doing. So, I can’t really hold it against you. I’d like to welcome you to our little corner of the Internet, and offer you some sincere advice.

You’re a bureaucrat now, so it’s important that you learn ways to avoid doing work. Otherwise you’re going to raise the bar for all your new bureaucrat friends, and they won’t like you anymore. I mean let’s face it, you’ve got a pretty sweet gig. Wouldn’t want to mess that up. So, let’s take a look at this recent “request for proposal” your bosses sent out for the creation of a “social listening platform” and see if we can’t find some corners you can cut.

You're looking for a social media monitoring company to design a program for you that can, “gather data from various social media outlets and news sources” to “guide the organization’s public relations group.”

The Fed is Hiring!

Sep 29, 2011 at 4:18 PM

By Megan Duffield

I can guarantee the keyword searches of "Federal Reserve," "Fiat money," "printing press," and "scumbags" will deliver the new Fed social media monitors straight to Silver Circle's website and blog. No worries though, we've seen the traces of the Boston Federal Reserve IT department in our analytic logs long before this news was released.

I won't sit here and act disgusted, because that reactionary emotion is comprised of surprise and...I'm not surprised. After the humiliating efforts to gather tips on negative language towards President Obama with AttackWatch.com, starting in December it looks like the Fed will devise a more direct and less public plan. (In case you were wondering, you can still submit suspicious claims and attacks on the President at the Attack Watch site.)

Much like any other company or campaign, the Federal Reserve has an open proposal to hire a social media monitoring company to track the conversation about itself online. They don't seem to be discriminating either...mainstream media sources, personal blogs, Twitter accounts, and Facebooks can appear on the radar according to the monitoring applications they are exploring.