This week, the New York Federal Reserve Bank announced its plans to begin a social media monitoring project to gauge online sentiment about the Fed’s actions and general economic policy. Some people (i.e. civil libertarians and activists against big government) are irate and are likening the Fed’s actions to those of Big Brother. But can you really fault the Fed for wanted to know what people are saying about them online? The private sector has been doing it for years.
As an ORM company, we were interested in finding out just what monitoring tactics the Fed was interested in using. Going beyond basic article gathering to gage public sentiment, the Fed wants to know what individuals are saying, and was intelligent enough to target Facebook and Twitter as the perfect realm for learning the truth. Of course they’ll also track their repute as judged by news sources like the Wall Street Journal, CNN and the Associated press (all named in the request for proposal), but it shows that the corporation cares about more than economists or financial bloggers. And most interestingly, they also requested that vendors offer a monitoring system that allows people monitoring the project for the Fed can login to and track results (hey, that sounds kind of familiar…).
We commend the decision of the New York Federal Reserve Bank to be active in the monitoring of their online reputation. While they’ll likely find that many people aren’t happy with the economy and the actions of large financial corporations, hopefully the Fed will find ways to interact with individuals online to alter their tactics and hopefully eliminate some of the angrier sentiments floating around online. Fast Company has a great look at the Fed’s program as well.
