Where do military members and their families go for information, camaraderie, and support? To online military forums, including the 50-plus you’ll find in the Twing directory.

Active members of the military use online forums to talk about fieldcraft, military weapons, recruiting and training issues, mental toughness, injury and recovery, and more. Forums are also a place to have open and honest discussions about military activism, advocacy, and career progression.

Veterans use military forums to locate old buddies, communicate with their units, monitor veterans memorials, and get POW/MIA updates. They’re also a place to discuss tough topics like post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and agent orange exposure. And forums can help with the practical side of military service, too, by providing answers to questions about VA procedures, disability claims, and other veterans benefits.

For those who are considering joining the military or who are in the early stages of training, forums are a chance to hear what life is like as a soldier, officer, and in life-long military careers. Forums are also the place to talk about preparing for boot camp and what happens during and after basic training.

Still, military forums aren’t only for members of the military themselves. You’ll also find forums for military spouses, parents, and families, where the talk focuses on coping with deployment (before, during, and after), troop support, and grieving and loss. And since no one understands the practical concerns of one military family better than another, there are plenty of helpful discussions about military housing, home economizing, and adjusting to frequent moves.

We’ve listed some of the most active military forums in the Twing Directory, below. The high quality of conversation and advice being exchanged is impressive, so check them out!

• Air Force Enlisted Forums
• Air Warriors
• Armchair General
• Army Cadet Force Forums
• Army National Guard Forums
• Marine Corps Community for USMC Veterans
• Military Significant Other and Spouse Support
• Navy Seals.com
• USMC Hangout
• Veterans Resources.org

For you kids that didn’t catch the original Mission Impossible Series or Tom Cruise’s more recent MI movies, Mr. Phelps, (played by Jim Graves), started with a self-destructing tape. On it, Phelps would be always have the option to reject his mission. He never did of course. And it seems the only thing 23-year-old Michael Phelps is rejecting is his opponents.

Phelps on the Boards

No. He hasn’t switching to diving. But on the Bulletin Boards / Forums, he’s become a hot topic real fast. Neilsen BuzzMetrics’ Blog post has the blogosphere temperature rising on Michael Phelps as well.

You can see how quickly Michael Phelps has heated up the discussion pool across the forums with this Buzz Chart from Twing.com

(Click on the chart for the full size version.)

Find out what people saying about Michael Phelps on the boards. This is likely to only heat up more later today as he goes for Gold number 7. (As I write this, it’s Friday, 8/15 2:00 PM EDT, so by “today” I mean in Beijing where it’s already Saturday.) If he wins the 100 m butterfly, then all that’s in his way is the 4 x 100 m Medley Relay, where he’ll have to rely on his teammates as well has himself as he did in the past two relays. As we know, those turned out to be Olympic Gold and world record efforts.

Scott

Most brand managers are thrilled when some celebrity du jour gets candidly caught brandishing their company’s bling or soft drink or whatever. But what about when the celebrity doesn’t quite match the brand. It’s bad enough, (from Disney’s perspective) for 15-year-old Miley Cyrus, (a.k.a. Hannah Montanna), to be part naked in a photo shoot. (History here.) But at least in that case, Disney can say, “Hey kid, you wanna’ keep earning the big $$$, chill on the Paris wannabe.

These days, between WhateverTube and Twitter and this and that, anyone can be Paparazzi. And anyone can be a spokesperson. Leaving aside outright hoaxes, (like the Janet Hoax where Janet is not really an Exxon representative on Twitter), there’s other real issues.

Porno & Parmigina

The Wall Street Journal has recently recounted the story of super hottie Kendra Wilkonson’s love for the Olive Garden.  The WSJ article subhead, Olive Garden Has Mixed Feelings About Its Biggest Celebrity Fan, says it all. In essence, the company isn’t thrilled given it’s family orientation. Still, it’s not like they want to say, “hey, we don’t want people being happy about our product.” More likely, this is just an annoyance to PR people who answer the call “Hi, what’s your position on this Kendra thing.” The answer, initially, was probably something like, “What Kendra thing.” Or… maybe they were monitoring their brand online and saw it coming.

Now, if they had been using Twing Forum Search to search for Oliver Garden in the forum space, maybe they would have had an earlier heads up. So regardless of how they’d choose to respond, it not only wouldn’t be a surprise, but they might get a sense of what people thought of this.

They might have even noticed a July uptick in their relative popularity and clicked in deeper to see what was going on if they were using Twing’s Buzz Charts.

The Lessons Continue

It’s all very simple. Be aware of your brand in social media or be surprised. It’s always better to have an early read on what’s going on and be able to respond rather than react.

Bottom Line: Your customers are talking. It’s just not always to you.

Scott

This was really fun.

People are starting to recognize the real value deep in forums.

ABC news even put us in their very informative web TV show, AHEAD of the CURVE.

See Twing on AHEAD of the CURVE.

So I just finally got a chance to write something up about the most recent Online Community Unconference we attended, (Twitter hash #ocu2008). It was last week in San Francisco. If you haven’t heard of an “unconference” yet, it’s likely you will soon. It’s an increasingly popular format where participants in the conference determine most or all of the sessions. Then participants to to the session and… well… they participate. The outcome is ideally some good notes and learnings for unconference goers, the same information - assuming a good note taker - gets captured in the conference Wiki for the whole world, and also - in this case - Twinkies. (A picture of the snack table.) I hadn’t had Twinkies in years. So, sadly, I had to choose a couple of those over the more healthy snacks. But… I digress…

The Changing Character of the Unconference

These are getting better. I have to admit, when I first experienced the “unconference” format, I was at first skeptical and afterwards, my low expectations were met. The experience was lacking. However, after attending several more, (at Web 2.0 Expo, this conference and some others), I’m changing that opinion. Why? What’s happened with unconferences?

• The Participants: Attendees are learning how this format works and making more of it. Some are showing up with solid clarity on what topics they want to propose. Which has pros and cons of course. The pros being at least some sessions with clearer agendas, the cons being the nature of an “UN”conference is to have a ton of flexibility. In any case, it was nice to see a few semi-structured sessions at this one mixed in with all the more organic sessions.
• Unconference Leaders: In spite of the open nature of these things, there still needs to be some clarity in original direction and session coordination. The companies and individuals running these things are getting better at that.
• The Venues: While one would think such things could be anywhere and have value, (and they can), there’s certain aspects of the venue that can make a difference. Having good spaces, that have laptop connections to projectors and solid WiFi available make a huge difference. Organizers have been better about making sure venues are ready.

Twing as a Sponsor

Twing actually attended this conference as a sponsor. We were fairly popular. I’d like to think it was just because people loved Twing. And we did get some really good feedback. But we also gave out these great book premiums as well. (We brought 100 copies of Patrick O’Keefe’s Managing Online Forums book.)

I think being here as a sponsor was an overall positive experience for us. Besides gaining awareness for our product, we got great feedback from people who are deeply entrenched in social media. They understand what we’re trying to do and as a result were able to offer helpful comments. It’s difficult to do the conference / sponsor thing; not just due to the costs in dollars, but the time / effort to organize and attend when you’re trying to build new features at the same time. But this one was one worth it. Hopefully, you’ll see more of us at such venues in the future. (Though more often a bit closer to our metro NYC home.)

Scott