Social Networking

I seek leave to table David Cunliffe’s Twitter statement…”

When Prime Minister John Key sought leave in Parliament to table a Twitter ‘statement’ made by the Hon David Cunliffe, there were many sceptical looks shared around the nation, not so much because Cunliffe claimed that this Twitter profile was not his (“I do not have, and have never had, an account on the Internet site Twitter… I have never sent a tweet and I have never even, to my knowledge, received a tweet” he told the other MPs in the House emphatically), but because it made New Zealanders more aware the Social Networking Sites are becoming more and more imperative to the way that we as people interact.

Twitter and its friends Bebo, MySpace and Facebook are all part of the Social Network Site revolution that has swept across the world in little under a decade. They’re meant to be used as ways to keep the average person connected to networks that they may not necessarily have otherwise kept in contact with, although more enterprising people have used these forums as an engine for online advertising. Take the rise of Lily Allen through MySpace: it’s well documented that the way in which the loud-mouth Brit rose to fame was through sharing her music through her public profile.

Closer to home though, and on a political note once more, many people thought that if the Prime Minister of New Zealand was adamant on using this type of technology as evidence against an opposing politician, than surely this type of technology has some form of credibility. But does it really? What is its real purpose? And why are we all so darn obsessed with what our friends are up to online?

What exactly is a Social Networking Site?