General FAIL: The Military’s Worst Tweeters [Twitter]

Generals and admirals are powerful people. Their decisions determine the course of thousands of lives, with aftereffects which could affect millions more. Their words are parsed for clues in regards to the future of yank warfare. And they absolutely cannot tweet.

Twitter could be nearing 200 million users worldwide. But the military has a love-hate relationship with microblogging: The Marines, working example, banned it last year , at the side of other social networking services. But communications officers are coming around to the argument that it’s a tweet-or-be-tweeted-about information world. If the military doesn’t use tools like Twitter to spread its message, the argument goes, it’ll risk losing control of news and influencing people. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has become a prolific tweeter as @thejointstaff , weighing in on controversies like the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell . The outcome: more than 32,000 followers.

Mullen, alas, is an exception. Twitter and flag officers still generally go together like oil and water. It’s a new medium, finally, and not anyone says they’ve got to head ALL-CAPS EVERYTHING like Kanye or get into tweet-fights with detractors to exploit the medium well. But for some, the growing pains are apparent, even though we’re not seeing any Direct-Message Fails.

(Full disclosure: The Pentagon asked me a number of months ago to share some thoughts about social media at a up to date forum.)

Just because you may install a Twitter account doesn’t mean you utilize it well. Here’s our guide to a couple of the lamest military Twitter feeds.

1. Adm. James Stavridis. Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander and former Southern Command leader, is regarded as by many to be among the many brightest lights within the military, a well-respected strategic thinker and all-but-certain future Joint Chiefs chairman. He’s also a technophile – he once assured bloggers that he personally replies to wall posters on his Facebook page – and prolific blogger . Here’s Stavridis riffing off of Dr. Strangelove to speak about a contemporary NATO strategic-planning document, as an instance. Natural-born tweeter, right?

If only. Stavridis’ Facebook friends get jokey photos of his wife with an incredible ” fish” they ” caught” inside the Caribbean . And @stavridisj ‘s followers get the sort of updates you’d expect from a co-worker who’s really all for the deli’s new sandwich. Dec. 1: ” Just briefed SECDEF and headed home to Belgium !” Last week, he let us know he had a briefing in Stuttgart , because we were curious. As if he’s worried about Mullen or Defense Secretary Robert Gates looking over his shoulder, Stavridis keeps us updated on when he meets with, say, the Belgians on Afghanistan . Come on, admiral, you’re purported to be probably the most social-media-forward officer within the military. More like these updates on NATO’s help in combating Israel’s recent forest fires in real time; less ” Just finished an off-site with a dozen of my key Admirals and Generals – finding efficiencies and interagency integration .” You would fit the Strangelove reference into 140 characters.

2. Gen. Carter Ham. Is it really necessary to tweet ” Thanks!!! ” to everyone who fills out a survey? Ham, the subsequent commander of all U.S. troops in Africa , had the unenviable task this year of studying troops’ attitudes to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. By all accounts, he did an intensive and professional job. But if @GenCarterHam was presupposed to supplement Ham’s effort, it didn’t exactly profit from Twitter. Not only did Ham tweet a trifling 42 times between March and September, only 12 of those tweets asked troops to fill out online surveys concerning the repeal – and only half of those actually gave his tweeps the URL to accomplish that. None used the favored #DADT hashtag to attract nonfollowers’ attention.

Instead, Ham gave gold stars to everyone who took the survey, without discussing any interesting issues raised. The Coast Guard gave ” insightful comments and questions ,” and you don’t get to grasp what they were. Fort Hood gave a ” lively” discussion, making it ” easy to peer why they call it ‘The Good spot!’ ” Same with the Naval Academy: ” Great insights from staff, faculty and Midshipmen. But, I didn’t enjoy taunting about recent football results ” It isn’t just Army cadets who must step their game up.

3. Gen. Martin Dempsey. Another missed opportunity. Dempsey commands the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command – basically the ground service’s brain. The complete Army’s long-term puzzling over the long run of land warfare and methods to adapt to it runs through TRADOC, as it’s known. That is why following @Martin_Dempsey must be a real-time account of an adaptive Army.

But what can we get? ” I beg you to share your stories and photos of Fort Monroe’s rich heritage for a new book. Details at: http://bit.ly/ftmonroe” Or, in March: ” Outstanding morning of briefers, ideas, and insight at the TRADOC Senior Leaders Conference here in WIlliamsburg, VA.” Maybe you might want to share with us what you learned? Instead, Dempsey prefers to tweet out speeches or guidance that he gives on modernizing the force. Far be it for a blog to deride using Twitter for self-promotion, but here’s a possibility for Dempsey to have interaction with soldiers and learn what they believe is important for the Army’s future. Indeed, here’s @Martin_Dempsey tweeting a speech he gave about getting soldiers to ” engage the Army on what it means to be a part of a profession ,” rather then just calling them to accomplish that on Twitter. All told, he asked for soldiers’ input a grand total of twice , and didn’t retweet a single reply. For TRADOC not to profit from a transformative technological innovation is simply too ironic.

4. Brig. Gen. Steven Spano. The previous tweeters are stingy with their big-think. But Spano, the communications chief for the Air Force’s Air Combat Command, has no shortage of way-out-there-in-the-blue tweets. His feed is actually one of my favorites, because rarely am I sure what @accsix is actually tweeting about. ” Best practices inside theory often bring about best intentions actually ,” begins Spano’s Dec. 22 gem, ” unique variables must drive unique practices in similar business lines.” Get back? ” If the price of knowledge at rest greatly diminishes through the years, shouldn’t our security model be more flexible and adaptive? ” If only, general! Run with that! Prepared the ground! I promise it’ll get you more followers.

5. Gen. Will Fraser. Spano’s boss at Air Combat Command seems to view Twitter as primarily a morale booster. @ACCBoss is a feed stuffed with you-guys-rule tweets like: ” Superb visit to 705 CTS [Combat Training Squadron] at Kirtland AFB – tremendous progress has been made with distributed mission operations.” And: ” Promoted MajGen Ted Kresge to LtGen – he is off to command 13th Air Force – we would like him the entire best and thank him for his continued service.” All of that’s cool. But it is a revolutionary moment for air combat, with remotely piloted aircraft playing the role that fighter jets once played . Maybe Fraser has some Twitter-friendly perspectives on that he could share? There’s more to social networking than sharing a reenlistment ceremony at the Talladega Superspeedway .

Bottom line, sirs: Donald Rumsfeld has an improved Twitter feed than you do quickly. You going to let that stand?

Image: FAILWhale/ Yiying Lu

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This post is tagged: chairman of the joint chiefs, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, communications officers, joint chiefs chairman, joint chiefs of staff, supreme allied commander