Despite New Policy, Pentagon Still Wary of the 'Tubes

[Commentary] There's a yawning gap between theory and practice when it comes to the military's use of Web 2.0.

Earlier this week, Janson Communications, a public relations firm that works for government and defense industry clients, released an interesting survey of the military's use of Facebook pages. Among the study's findings:

• Most of the military pages -- a full 84 percent -- had no interaction with their fans at all during the study period.
• Some of the pages studied had no content, or hadn't been updated for several months (what the study cleverly describes as "zombie" pages).
• Many military Facebook pages were not clearly marked as "official," meaning they could be easily confused with "clone" pages made to look like official, government-sponsored pages that may have inaccurate information.

Why is that important? It's not just about morale, or creating a web-savvy image: When something happens like yesterday's shooting at the Pentagon metro entrance, people need to find out as quickly as possible. They shouldn't have to wait several hours for a commanding officer to give a briefing, as happened at Fort Hood. Web 2.0 isn't a cure-all, but if used effectively and correctly, it can solve communications problems and eliminate information bottlenecks.