Like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr:

Army public affairs managers have worked hard to share the service’s stories through social sites like Flickr, Delicious and Vimeo. Links to those sites featured prominently on the Army.mil homepage. The Army carefully nurtured a Facebook group tens of thousands strong, and posted more than 4,100 photos to a Flickr account. Yet the people presumably most interested in these sites — the troops — were prevented from seeing the material. Many Army bases banned access to the social networks.
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It is “the intent of senior Army leaders to leverage social media as a medium to allow soldiers to ‘tell the Army story’ and to facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information,” says the order, obtained by Danger Room. Therefore, “the social media sites available from the Army homepage will be made accessible from all campus area networks. Additionally, all web-based email will be made accessible.”

Forget about the “Army’s Story,” (though, I know the Army would like to break through the MSM’s bubble of reporting only the deaths and not the positive stories of the Army’s success), the more compelling reason to lift the ban is to allow the men and women fighting on foreign soil the opportunity to stay connected to family and friends. Letting them know how they are doing and to find out what’s going on back at home. It’s a great way to view pictures and videos of the kids and the spouse.
It’s a positive step in the right direction to keep the families intact while they are separated from each other. And that’s got to be a great morale booster.