Agencies Get Two More Social Media Sites to Pick From

Add two more social networking sites to the list of roughly 70 approved for government use.

CrowdHall, a site for politicians and others to hold online town halls, and Tint, which allows users to display curated social media feeds on their websites, mobile apps and Facebook pages, are the latest to join the list of sites with federal-friendly terms of service, the General Services Administration announced in a blog post on Wednesday.

GSA has also updated its terms of service with Tumblr, a blogging site used by numerous federal agencies, after the site was acquired by Yahoo in 2013, the agency said. Tumblr now has a global terms of service agreement that meets federal requirements rather than a separate agreement with the federal government, GSA said.

Federal-friendly terms of service typically give federal agencies greater power over the content they post to social networking sites, such as barring the site from making any substantive changes to posts or giving the impression that  agencies are endorsing the networking site. They also often require prior warning of any changes in the site’s general terms of service agreements and require sites to manage any data provided by agencies in accordance with federal records laws. 

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