Friday, September 6, 2013

Maybe they can play Poppyfarmville - Blueline meets a vertical social networking need

Another police related story, this one from Fox News:

The final stages are near completion for the launch of a law enforcement social media network designed exclusively for the men and women in blue.

Created by former high-profile New York City police commissioner and Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Bratton, BlueLine is being touted as a site where officers can share their expertise, insight and information securely through video, instant messaging, videoconferencing and screen share capabilities.


Why not use Facebook, Google+, or LinkedIn for such networking? Because in this particular profession, there are people who kinda sorta want to kill you:

"Our focus is to have a walled community where you're verified and authenticated, so you have a safe form of communication with law enforcement, analysts and administrators," said David Riker, Bratton Technologies' president.

That wall of security is extremely important, said longtime Los Angeles Police Capt. Sean Malinowski, who has a group of officers testing BlueLine....

Malinowski said most officers have some safety and privacy concerns using social media sites due to the dangers associated with their jobs.

"They try not to be as traceable because there are threats made against officers all of the time," said Malinowski, who is also married to a police officer. "You try not to be paranoid about it, but it does cross your mind."

BlueLine will require multiple verifications for members of law enforcement to join and enter the network, said Jack Weiss, Bratton Technologies' chief strategy officer. He added that the platform will be housed in a secure data center that is compliant by the U.S. Department of Defense and the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services.


And yes, in this case "FBI" does mean the Federal Bureau of Investigation, not Frontier Bookings International.

Oh, and incidentally, there probably won't be a "Poppyfarmville" game on the service. The creators say that the service is more akin to LinkedIn rather than Facebook, although it will have video capabilities.
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