The military has always been a distinctive American culture unto itself. From life under deployment, to moving from base to base while stateside, to the unique life experiences of military spouses and their "brats," it sometimes seems like the armed services is an insular little world featuring everything from its own schools to its own hospitals. So by that token it would make sense for the U.S. Department of Defense to develop something else of its own, like an online social network.

Yes that's right; the Defense Department recently launched a pilot program for DEFStar, a social networking tool very similar to Facebook --- but with not as much Farmville or drunken late-night status updates. The program launched on .mil and .gov servers this past spring, and is causing some waves in the DoD ranks.

The project was initiated by the Arlington, Virginia-based Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). Brock Webb, an engineer with DISA, explained to Signal Magazine that the agency "really wanted to take advantage of what the commercial space was offering because the commercial sector had been involved in social networking since before 2004."

In November of 2008 DISA reached out with a contract to Fairfax, Virginia-based SRA International Incorporated, to help them build the web application that would eventually grow into DEFStar. Steve Fox, SRA's DEFStar project manager, explained to Signal that as a means to keep down costs the organization worked with the Drupal Association, developers who contribute to the open-source content management platform also being used for the White House blog and by other government agencies. 

In an attempt to make the platform more palatable to a primarily uniformed audience, SRA made certain changes to distinguish it from those that catered to the Dave Matthews/Natty Light crowd. For instance, users don't add "friends" but rather the more professional sounding "colleagues." Other than that, DEFStar isn't very different from most other social networks. Users create their own profiles, including uploading a picture if they choose to, that features information such as work history and personal/professional interests. Users can create common-interest groups and write on each other's walls. All of this sounds pretty friendly, even if users are forbidden from referring to each other as such.

So far DEFStar is still in its pilot program stages, but SRA and DISA have already begun asking some 1,600 users for constructive feedback about ways to improve the program. According to the SRA team, one of the most frequent suggestions they have received is increased security measures for the program. So far the site's only security requirements are a username and password to log in, and while that is a good start it isn't exactly Fort Knox either. 

Webb himself acknowledges that in order to attract security-conscious military personnel to the site it is essential to improve safety measures. "One of the biggest barriers to adoption is that it is not behind a firewall," he told Signal. "We don't have a really good in-house product that we could use more securely to do more work-related communications."

While the program has predictably become popular among younger department personnel, its appeal has reached across a broad spectrum. "Our average user base is in their mid- to late 40's," Fox told Signal. "We are pretty close to the age demographics of the Defense Department." Fox went on to add that since the "Defense Department is still working on its policies regarding use of social networks," DEFStar's classified status is still up in the air and has led to somewhat lax security measures.

Webb defends DEFStar against charges that it's merely MySpace for the camouflage set, claiming that clients may use the platform as a social networking tool but with meaningful goals in mind. "You may say, ‘Let's go get coffee,' but it's all about getting to know people," he argues.

Ultimately the success of DEFStar, as with any online social network, depends on its users. Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn thrive because users organically create and nurture a self-sustaining online community. If the desire to converse, argue, network, and keep in touch is in place then DEFStar is probably halfway home to becoming a successful network. The other part of the equation is tweaking and improving the platform to fit the needs and desires of registered users. This isn't a hard thing to do, but requires the site's administrators to keep their ear to the ground and know when to make changes.

Of course it is only a matter of time before those pictures from Robert Gates' awesome New Years Eve kegger show up on someone's profile page and the whole thing falls apart, but that could be fun too.