FCC Launches New Media Tools

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski posted his first video blog on the FCC's Blogband page, outlining his ambitions for the Commission to start using new media tools to communication with the public. In addition, the FCC has launched on the crowd-sourcing platform, Ideascale. Crowd-sourcing allows the online community to discuss, evaluate and rank ideas. The platform will be especially useful as the Commission develops a National Broadband Plan, which will provide a strategy for reaching all Americans with robust broadband. The FCC will also be launching on social media sites Facebook and YouTube. Finally, the FCC is also launching a central repository of RSS data feeds from the agency. Though the FCC launched a general RSS feed in August, the addition of 48 feeds provides more robust access. As part of its commitment to opening government data and furthering transparency, the FCC will continue to grow the catalog of data feeds