While we are increasingly inter-connected, and existing divisions such as the private and public blur (both the personal and political), net technology enables all sorts of groupings to emerge.

Though increased sociality doesn’t necessarily lead to progressive movements. Far right/fascist groups have seriously utilized the net, and Facebook has not been immune from it either. http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2007/08/05/facebook-the-bnp/trackback/

Anyway. I think, fundamentally, I disagree with you Sunny. It’s already beginning to take a slow effect, and I’m pretty sure that effect will increase over time. But before that, I’m going to point those worried about stuff showing in feeds at the privacy options:
http://www.facebook.com/privacy.php?view=feeds

You can set it to not display changes to your relationship status if you want to. Yes, not being able to list secondary relationships is annoying, but my SO and I decided to simply set our status as ‘complicated’ (not Open, that seems wrong somehow), which works well, and it does provoke honesty, which I approve of in relationships.

You can also delete any item in your profile feed by looking at your profile and clicking the ‘X’ next to the story; easy, innit. I learnt all these tricks way before I even signed up, I refer you all to DoctorVee’s rather nicely named post:
http://doctorvee.co.uk/2006/09/09/the-utter-cretins-guide-to-privacy-on-facebook/

Anyway. social networking is unlikely to offer tangible benefits to politicians here or in the United States in the near future. On this I actually disagree. Last Tuesday, I attended an event in the House, organised by a Facebook Lib Dem group. Chris Huhne was hosting, and gave a great presentation on the projects he’s working on. He knew several of the people there (London based activists plus a few others such as myself and Jennie), but the whole thing was organised through the site, including event invitations and similar.

Afterwards, there was a meal which about half the attendees went to; a fair few were PPCs or Cllrs, and it gave them a chance to network, trade ideas, etc in a social setting. The whole advantage of Fb is it makes it really easy to promote events and see who is going, nice and quickly. Yes, numbers are low now, but for a group of this size to exist already, just, effectively, through Fb promotion, is pretty good.

A different example is James Graham’s Freedom of Information Bill campaign, he set up a facebook group, and a bunch of us invited friends and similar to join, and it eventually got 300 members, despite it being a minority interest campaign; several of those that joined were not normal activists, but it allowed James to send out updates and information, and we know from feedback that letters &c were sent to Parliamentarians as a result. As a first attempt, it went well, and kudos to James for setting it all up.

Sure, numbers aren’t high enough yet, but I’ve seen estimates saying that 1 in 10 Londoners uses the site, for example, and that number is dispropotionately young, educated and active. As the site developes, the number of people will continue to grow; virtually all current undergrads I’m in contact with use it, for example.

Groups can be improved, but like all, what you get out of it is dependent on what you put into it, and I’m pretty sure they’ll continue to add useful features.

Is it the ultimate panacea? Nah, something newer and funkier will come along at some point, but it’s an open API, they’ll link in and extract data, etc. I think it offers a great chance to really get information spread out, based on interests and friends groups.

Chance. That’s the keyword though.

*goes to add Sunny for later demonstrations…*

i met someone at a ‘feminist’magazine launch party i went to on thursday – it turned out he was there investigating allegations that it was a cult! he’s going to add me as a fb friend so i can find out how his ‘research’ goes – that should make for a good ‘how do you know this person..’ entry! hyuk

Lol. Well one doesn’t actually have to have their relationship status listed.

I think the social networks point is good, although it also helps people create networks across and beyond traditional alumni grounds. Through blogging I’ve made a network of contacts and friends far beyond my school or uni.

It makes you wonder if in years to come, your facebook binding (or simular site) maybe as important as socially important a marriage …

(Nice ‘seeing’ you again Sonia!)

TFI

and it’s hard to keep secrets, if you’re trying to have multiple relationships in secret, FB is the worst route you can go down. ( heh )

Yes it will affect policitics by effecting influence and the social coechion of real existing social groups, not my having “veggie” groups or by organizing policital campaigns.

The one thing that is immediately affecting people is relationships, you can a one wife / girlfriend, you can even be in an open relationship, but you cannot have multiple relationships. This has two effects, firstly its harder to two time a girl and when a relationship comes to an end facebook announces it to EVERYBODY YOU KNOW making it the point of official break up.

Today we are playing with this tool as it is exicting, new but how will be viewing in 2 years time?

TFI

There’s just too many ‘fun’ apps and not enough really useful ones. It means they lose the incentive to develop FB properly which means things like decent formating for notes or forum discussion (I think the lack of decent discussion is impaired by the technical set up, take a look at popular forums such as Urban75.com to see what I mean) aren’t likely any time soon.

Groups really are underdeveloped and need upgrading, there’s no way to add RSS feeds for your news on them for example. Events work fine and probably have some use for mobilising people but again limited if used on their own.

Anyway, this all might be moot not least because if the court case goes badly it might get turned off but because the over all aims of FB are different to what I’d want. Basically the owner wants FB to one day become an operating system; take a look at were Google is going and you can see how this will work.

Windows XP can’t be considered a good political tool so FB wont either ultimately.