Military Families Can't YouTube, But Now They Can TroopTube

Debuting appropriately enough on Veteran's Day, life in the military just got a little bit less lonely with the launch of TroopTube, the Department of Defense's new social networking site.

The online video site was designed to keep military families connected with their loved ones serving in the armed forces. Users can send uploaded videos privately or for general viewing. In addition, videos can only be viewed on the site and are not allowed to be embedded otherwise for viewing on the Internet.

Videos are divided into categories for the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, civil and DoD workers; guard reserve; and troop supporters. Each section contains subcategories organized under the subjects of families, buddies, holidays, news, pets, sports and others.

Since the site just launched there are few videos available for viewing. The No. 1 video so far is a message to the troops from Central Commander General David Petraeus' address at the 2008 Association of the U.S. Army Conference in Washington, D.C.

The Pentagon is charged with monitoring submitted videos and will reject any that they deem inappropriate, violating copyrights or a threat to security.

Security leaks were the primary reason why the DOD shut down military access to social networking sites like YouTube last year, in addition to high bandwidth usage.

The TroopTube site is under the auspices of the DoD's Military OneSource, a site that provides podcasts, Webinars, discussion boards, a library and newsfeeds. Military OneSource was built using technology from Ceridian.

In turn, the TroopTube site is powered by Seattle-based Delve Networks, which created tools for screening, approving and indexing new videos submitted for upload.

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