Social Networking - Bringing people together

The internet has always revolved around social networking, but the explosion of a fresh generation of communal sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook is taking the phenomenon into new territory. MySpace, now owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, with a claimed membership of more that 180 million (bigger than most countries) may be the doyen of them all, but some of the younger ones are proving more innovative. At a time when foreign news is dominated by civil war, be it in Iraq or Palestine, the web establishes communities of like-minded people that transcend nationality, religion and government. Politicians are already starting to colonize this space... but it is more difficult to predict what it might lead to ten years hence.

A new generation accustomed to instant networking, and unashamed about living more of their lives online, is bound to change the organizations they work for and maybe the way their governments communicate with them. It is equally possible that it could lead to global dumbing down of a kind that would make YouTube look cerebral. But at least, for once, the solution lays in the hands, or rather the fingerprints, of the users themselves.