Friend, Follow, Subscribe: U.S. Mission Launches Digital Diplomacy Sites

Facebook: Most of you are already familiar with Facebook. We have 2,400 fans. This means that every time we make an update more than 1,000 people can access our message and keep abreast of what we’re doing and saying. That number can even double if you consider friends of our fans that can also see the updates. (http://www.facebook.com/usembassyzambia)

Twitter: Twitter is different from Facebook. On Facebook, we have fans and friends – whereas on Twitter we have followers, people that follow our updates or “tweets” as they are called.  Twitter is, in fact, a micro blog.  It usually gives an immediate pulse on news, events, and what people are talking about, often before any news outlet.  We have over 1,000 followers.  (http://twitter.com/usembassyzambia)

YouTube: This is a video hosting site. It’s an easy way for us to broadcast our videos to the world.  Some of the TV interviews we do end up here.  Many people, including journalists, look through YouTube videos.  Less people use YouTube than other forms of social media due to the slow Internet speeds in Zambia but for those that have access, like Zambians serving overseas, YouTube helps them keep in touch with us.  We have 26 subscribers and 5 friends. (http://www.youtube.com/usembassyzambia)

Flickr:  This site is dedicated to photos and photo sharing.  It’s complete with photo streams and galleries.  Photos taken during our events will eventually end up here.  We can then direct people who attend our functions to visit our Flickr to check for a photo they might have been featured in during an event.  (http://www.flickr.com/photos/usembassyzambia)

Pod bean:  This is where our podcasts end up.  A podcast is simply an audio clip (usually an interview) that can be uploaded to the Internet for people to listen to online or download for personal use.  The word in itself is a play of the word broadcast combined with the word iPod.  However, you do not need an iPod to listen to podcasts.  They can be downloaded and played on any device, laptop, PC, Mp3 player, etc.

As you might be aware, the American Embassy releases podcasts every month.  The podcasts are sent in volumes and highlight Zambian/American success stories.  All podcasts are available for download on Podbean. (http://usembassyzambia.podbean.com).