The Federal Reserve Plans To Monitor Facebook, Twitter, Google News

  Here you go. The Fed is the first to react to Occupy Wall Street. Government by social media, prelude 1. (Well, unless you count Wall Street's announcement that they may be laying off 10,000 MORE financial workers.)

The New York Federal Reserve Bank is embarking on an ambitious social media monitoring project. Starting this December, the Fed will be monitoring Facebook, Twitter, and the broader web to gauge public response to economic policy. Civil libertarians and anti-big government activists are upset, but should they be?

As Occupy Wall Street gains stream, the New York Federal Reserve Bank wants to know--for better or worse--how they are perceived. And they're going to monitor social media to figure it out.
A vendor proposal request (or RFP) from the Fed, which describes a "Sentiment Analysis and Social Media Monitoring Solution," surfaced on Scribd on September 25, and was quickly featured on gonzo finance blog Zero Hedge.
According to the document, the Fed is now evaluating bids for a social media analysis system that will mine data from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and web forums--beginning in December.

From fastcompany.com


That was quick. Good work, OccupyWallStreet. Around here,  "...it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"  -The Red Queen,  Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland.

I think I posted uh, this morning?  That something like this was coming. Of course, the Red Queen didn't discuss running around in circles.