By Greg Hazley
The U.S. Navy’s public affairs unit focused on social media has kicked off a search for a social media monitoring vendor to track its Facebook activities, which have surged since a SEAL team took out bin Laden this month.
The Navy released an RFP May 5 with a May 16 deadline for quotes from vendors. [Link to RFP synopsis.]
A monitoring service must track keywords in all major worldwide languages, including Arabic, and have the ability to delete “blocked words” within five minutes of appearing on the Navy’s Facebook page and notify Navy PAOs. Another set of terms are deemed “watch term words” to be flagged, but not deleted.
The Navy’s Facebook page has more than 308K “fans” and garners scores of comments and postings each day, from criticism and debate to PA messaging and photos.
Wired reported May 2 that traffic to the Facebook pages of the Navy, SEALs and Army surged in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death May 1. Citing data from FanGager, Wired said the Navy page averaged about three dozen posts per day over the last month, a figure that surged to 595 on the Monday after the bin Laden operation.
A small team of public affairs officers within the Navy office of the chief of information, known as CHINFO, manages the armed force’s social media efforts.
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