The Facebook Blog

At Facebook, we're constantly connecting with interesting people—from experts and researchers to celebrities or visitors to our office. Occasionally, we'll share these conversations on the Facebook Blog in our "Connecting with..." series.

Chris Vein, the CIO for the City and County of San Francisco, recently predicted that social media services may displace government-run websites for many citizen interactions. Chris has played a key role in bringing access to city services to San Francisco's Facebook Page and other sites. I talked with him to... learn more about the role social media can play in local government services and citizen engagement.

A lot of people think of technology as an expensive investment. How are you trying to save money and use technology to provide better services?

Vein

It really is [about] the introduction of self-service and [that is] one of the things that we have done with Facebook. Citizens don't have time to come down to city hall, they don't have time to sit and see processes that waste their time; they become very impatient and that's how government gets a bad name.

So it's really trying to figure out ways to make those services available any time, any place and make them cheaper to provide. And so when we do things like allow citizens to pay their parking tickets through a Facebook application, you are allowing citizens to be in more control of their interaction with the government rather than government in control of the interactions.

Some city services could never be provided over the Internet, but what are some of the surprising ways you have been able to use technology?

I think virtually everything can be made more efficient with technology. I think yes, it would be difficult to make garbage collection go away by automating it. However, what you can do is provide more information to citizens on when garbage day is coming and what the parking laws are on particular streets so that people don't get tickets when the garbage truck comes along.

Now that's bad for ticket revenue. But on the other side from a citizen's perspective, we are combining a bunch of technologies in order to allow the citizens to be more in control of their lives and how they interact with the city...in ways that make life easier.

So it's not just about the services themselves being provided online, it's also about the access to information of the services that helps them become more smooth or efficient.

Exactly. That's also behind all of our efforts [to make] government transparent and hopefully accountable by talking to government agencies and finding out what data sets they have [and] putting them out there.... And it really is an opportunity for the average citizen to have access to the very core data elements that we use to make our decisions.

So from a transparency and accountability standpoint, if we are moving in a direction or taking an interpretation of specific data in a way that public doesn't agree with, they can come up with their own interpretation and challenge this..using social media like the city's Facebook Page.

What has surprised you about your Facebook Page? Is it its size, the kinds of discussions happening on it? Who is responsible for your Facebook Page within your office or within the city?

[We] keep a hands-off approach to it. We have no rules about what can be talked about. Certainly, we have rules around etiquette and those kinds of things. But, it really is an opportunity to put issues that are interesting to citizens out there and let the citizens discuss [issues] with each other and with the city....

I think the best reactions that we get are about quality-of-life issues. Obviously, in a city like San Francisco, there are many sides to that issue and, therefore, many opinions on that issue. When we put those quality-of-life issues out there that are of real importance to the citizens, that's where we see the most use and the best use. I think that's why we have so many people out there, because we are willing to put those tough, thorny political issues out there and let the community talk about them and see where they are....

Many jurisdictions are still looking at social media outlets as something that has to be contained. My belief is that social media and sites like Facebook and Twitter are just new or relatively new portals into the City and County of San Francisco, and they're just like a telephone or just like a fax machine or walk-in [counter]. These sites are ways that people are accessing different services, and we have to get ahead of it.

It seems like that's a discussion that not just your city is having in the County of San Francisco. What advice would you give to other cities about how to take advantage of these tools?

The first thing is don't be afraid of these new applications because our experience is that yes, you always have outliers, but the vast majority of information that's being exchanged is useful, it's positive and you may not always like it, but it does bring a whole new set [of people] into the legislative process that you've never had before.

The second [piece of] advice is to use it as a tool, use it as a way to understand what your constituents are concerned about and what they want from you. Take that information and start building your policies around it, because it is such an efficient way of gauging public support or public desire around the issues.

Third, I think you need somebody who is willing to be in a pothole, if you will, someone who is willing to always talk to everyone about how important these channels like Facebook are to not only the citizens but also to the government and how [they can be] used to make efficient changes to government services.


Adam Conner, an associate manger on Facebook's public policy team, can't wait to be able to pay his parking tickets on Facebook.

Debra Berlyn has nearly 20 years of consumer advocacy experience and is a leader on online safety issues. We've asked her to share her thoughts about helping older individuals embrace Facebook and other Internet services. Today, she is launching Project GOAL (the Project to Get Older Adults onLine).


Mississippi Winn has a Facebook profile with 55 friends as well as a Fan Page. Like many people in the United States and around the world, she enjoys all the benefits of having a broadband connection and participating in a social network, including... communicating with family and reconnecting with friends and loved ones. But one thing sets this Shreveport, La., resident apart from your average Internet and Facebook user: She's 113 years old, which makes her the oldest living person in Louisiana and the 11th oldest living person in the world. Yes, Facebook is now an online community of not only the young but also a rapidly growing number of older adults.

It's clear that having high-speed Internet at home can offer older individuals many benefits: telemedicine and healthcare information, the convenience and savings of shopping at home, entertainment, and of course social networking. Yet, only 35 percent of older adults (age 65 and older) have broadband at home -– and the numbers drop considerably in even older age brackets. That's why I'm excited to announce on Facebook the launch of a new effort to promote broadband adoption by the older adult community. Project GOAL (the Project to Get Older Adults onLine) will work with aging organizations to communicate the importance of getting our older community online.

For older adults, there are significant barriers to becoming Web-savvy. First, many just don't see the value of the Internet. While most of us have a hard time prying our fingers off our computer keyboards and mobile devices, recognizing the Internet's relevance to daily life is an important part of getting older adults to start adopting broadband. Communicating about all the great things you can do and experience online is one objective of Project GOAL.

A second reason for lower broadband adoption rates by older adults is a lack of comfort with computers. Older individuals may need help learning how to use technology. While "cutting and pasting" is second nature to most of us, my 87 year-old father thought such a task required scissors and Elmer's glue. Finally, older adults are worried that bad things can happen on the Internet. Offering tools and information regarding online safety, security and privacy for older adults is an important part of any effort to promote broadband adoption for the aging community.

Government agencies in the United States and elsewhere are committed to increasing broadband adoption. In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission recently released its National Broadband Plan, which was described as "a bold roadmap for the future of the Internet in America, a plan to connect America to affordable, high speed broadband." Project Goal shares this objective with a special focus on connecting our older individuals.

Check out Project GOAL's Facebook Page and its Web site at www.theprojectgoal.org. We hope to see a time in the near future when there are many more older people like Mississippi Winn joining Facebook, connecting with friends and family, and surfing the Internet to expand their opportunities.

Much to her daughter's dismay, Debra Berlyn has been on Facebook for a couple of years. She's still trying to convince her Dad to join.

Twenty-five years ago on this date, the first company registered a Web address with the now prolific .com extension. In recognition of that milestone, we've asked Internet industry leaders to take a look back at the impact of .com and share perspectives on the future direction of the Internet.

We're also honored to have Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg nominated as one of the the ".com 25"—a recognition of the 25 companies and people whose contributions were fundamental to shaping the Internet as we know it today. Google co-founders... Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates are among the 75 nominees. The final ".com 25" will be honored May 26 at a gala in San Francisco.


Mark McLaughlin
CEO, VeriSign Inc.

Looking back at the first .com 25 years ago is a little like discovering what was the original document to come out of the first printing press. It's interesting but what came after is the real story. And what came after symbolics.com, the first .com registered, has defined a generation.

Twenty-five years ago when the first .com name was registered, I was a freshman at West Point, with no concept of a connected world. Our idea of communications was our weekly lineup at the pay phone waiting to call our parents. Not long ago, I was back at West Point and I saw cadets carrying their world in their pocket with smart phones. Emailing, texting, and calling. They've never known life without the power of the Internet.

That's what the Internet has done for all of us. It has reshaped our perspective—about how we interact with each other and our relationship with the entire world. The social impact alone is staggering. With over 400 million users, Facebook would be the third-largest country in the world. Every day over 200 eHarmony members get married. And Apple just celebrated it 10 billionth iTunes download.

At VeriSign, all that Internet activity translates into 18 trillion website and email lookups a year that we handle. So, just as Johannes Gutenberg must have looked at the printing press and asked, "what's next?" we all wait to see where the Internet will take us. And, as the operator of .com we know that we won't dream up its uses, we just need to stand ready to support it.


Alec Ross
Senior Advisor for Innovation, Office of the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Ross

To me, the rise of .com has meant the near end of isolation. Growing up in West Virginia, I saw firsthand how life opportunities are limited by the information people are able to access. Grow up in an information-rich environment, and you are well-positioned to compete and succeed in knowledge-based sectors of the global economy. Grow up with a deficit of information, and you are positioned for the service industry, folding bed sheets and busing tables.

Dot-com has brought people and marketplaces more closely together. It has both created and strengthened communities by allowing them to take root in virtual spaces. In the coming years, I see the tectonic shift made possible by .com increasingly being about education. The innovations that have taken place connecting people to marketplaces and to each other will now connect people to educational resources in a way never previously imaginable. And because of it, kids will have an unbounded opportunity to learn.


Susan Crawford
Founder, OneWebDay

Crawford

I remember the first email address I ever saw, and I distinctly remember thinking that it was ridiculous. What was that loony "@" sign doing there? Why was everything in lower case? The exuberance and the essential humanity of the Internet took everyone by surprise, and all of those fireworks started with .com. We've adapted since then, and we're used to lower-case billions. But the story that changed the way the world learns, trades and communicates began with .com addresses and their decentralized, flexible nature.

What's coming next? Things are changing quickly, and .com is receding in importance as other namespaces and places become central. Internationalized domain names, in other scripts, are long overdue. There's a fight for gate-keeping control, and many of the players in that fight would prefer not to be relying on domain names. Nothing goes away, though, and we'll be seeing .com in lights for generations to come.



David Gross
Former Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, U.S. Department of State

Gross

During the past 25 years, .com—also known to its friends as "Dot Com"—has done more to change the world than any person or event. It has opened the world to potentially unlimited access to information and has encouraged people and governments to recognize—as they did at the UN's "heads of state" World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)—that "freedom of expression and the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge are essential" and that we are universally committed "to the freedom to seek, receive, impart and use information ... for the creation, accumulation and dissemination of knowledge."

From virtually every corner of the world, people are able to use .com to connect with friends and family, learn about economic opportunities, interact with governments (including the opportunity to tell "truth to power"—sometimes at great personal risk), save lives, help others and to make the world a better place for future generations. It doesn't get better or more powerful than that. Thank you .com and happy anniversary/birthday!


Andrew, manager of policy communications at Facebook, is looking forward to tomorrow's policy forum in Washington, D.C., to discuss the impact of 25 years of .com on our lives and our world.