Feds join Twitter revolution

Twitter is taking flight in unlikely skies: the U.S. federal government.

From NASA to the General Services Administration, more federal agencies are embracing Twitter as another Web-based channel to communicate news and engage in conversations with U.S. citizens (10 Twitter tips from early federal adopters).

NASA announced Monday that astronaut Mike Massimino would use Twitter to provide a personal behind-the-scenes peek at his last few weeks of training before embarking on a space shuttle mission.  In the first 48 hours of Astro_Mike tweets, Massimino attracted more than 14,000 followers on Twitter.

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Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration is notifying more than 3,200 consumers about recalls of peanut and pistachio products on its Twitter stream dubbed FDARecalls. FDA has been issuing four or five tweets a day announcing product recalls since December 2008.

Another leading advocate of Twitter is GSA, which manages government-wide IT contracts and provides training to federal Web managers on best practices for Web 2.0 technologies.

"We have done quite a bit with Twitter," says B. Leilani Martinez, a bilingual content manager for the GSA's Web site. "We have four official Twitter accounts for www.pueblo.gsa.gov, www.usa.gov, www.gobiernousa.gov, and www.govgab.gov. We blog one or two times a day....Twitter is just another channel that we are using to communicate."

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