The Observer, a news site sponsored by France’s channel 24, picked up on the launch of TroopTube by the U.S. Army.  Myself and Colby Buzzell  were asked to give our opinions of the militaries answer to banning YouTube from government systems:

A year and a half after US soldiers were banned from using YouTube and MySpace, the army has come up with an alternative. Forget the all-singing all-dancing mindless, amusing rubbish – this one’s loaded with pep talks and shout-outs. Not convinced? Neither are our Observers, former soldiers in Iraq.

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Jami Gibbs started writing her milblog when she was deployed to Iraq in 2005. Today she runs and writes the blog Patriot Missive, which she co-founded. 

“Considering the highly censored nature of TroopTube, I envision the majority of videos approved for public viewing as “keep in touch” clips. By that I mean videos specifically made for a service member or a family member while they’re separated on deployment. Quite frankly, these videos have little value to the general public; there isn’t much incentive for other people to “tune in” to TroopTube.

 

During the 14 months I spent in Iraq, I sent a few videos home in the holidays for my family. It wasn’t difficult for me to simply send the video file as an attachment in an email. If you have a webcam and an email address, there isn’t much to it. That’s why I’m wondering why it’s necessary to create a website for that purpose – it seems like an unnecessary middle-man to me. 

The reality is that everything is censored. Would a soldier who has uncensored internet access take time to view TroopTube?  No. Would a soldier deployed to Iraq who only has access to a censored DoD computer use TroopTube? Sure, why not. If anything, only out of sheer boredom.

Emotionally, TroopTube is interesting but not particularly useful like YouTube. TroopTube is simply patriotic, YouTube is resourceful. It’d be unfair to compare the two since they are functioning in two completely different ways.”

What do you think of TroopTube?

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