NASA starts first federal network on SlideShare

NASA is the first federal agency to venture into creating an aggregation network on the SlideShare Web platform, officials announced May 16.

The NASA Universe network that started May 16 on SlideShare provides links to the agency’s videos, slide presentations and other documents shared from SlideShare channels sponsored by NASA headquarters and its 10 field centers.

NASA Universe takes advantage of the new aggregation network technology, which SlideShare recently established and currently customizes for a handful of clients, including NASA, IBM and Dell. The SlideShare networks automatically and continuously aggregate content from many channels. NASA headquarters and the field centers each has its own channel on the site feeding documents into NASA Universe.

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”NASA Universe aggregates the content, which is great for us because we have 10 different field centers,” Stephanie Schierholz, said social media manager at NASA. “Aggregation makes sense for us.”

SlideShare offers a single location for sharing many types of content, including videos, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and Adobe PDFs, Schierholz said.

“We picked SlideShare because the make it really easy to share our best and most popular content, including videos, PowerPoints and PDFs, ” Schierholz said. “Some of that content might get lost on NASA.gov because we have so much content.”

SlideShare currently has thousands of channels and about 50 million visits per month, Mayfield said. It is free to become a registered user and to view, upload and download content. Sponsoring a channel costs $19 a month, he added.

Asked the cost of NASA Universe, Schierholz directed a reporter to SlideShare. Mayfield said the cost varies depending on the type of site and quantity of content because networks are customized products.