Having just got 5 minutes to check my RSS reader I’ve been catching up on the events of the day and the Guardian Media feed has informed me that my social networking contacts could be being watched.

A Home Office spokesman this morning announced that the government will be looking at monitoring all internet sites that allow users to communicate. That means Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, even Skype.

Apparently there are already plans to store every phonecall, email and internet hit made in the UK on a database and these social networking observations would be added to that plan.

In a quote I find probably inappropriately funny the spokesman points out “We have no way of knowing whether Osama bin Laden is chatting to Abu Hamza on Facebook. Or terrorists could be having a four-way chat on Skype”.

Oh dear. I suppose there’s no reason that this couldn’t be true (apart from the lack of wireless signal in caves) but it does seem a little OTT.

I agree that it makes sense to consider communication on social networking sites as on a par with more traditional forms but it does strike me as more than a little hysterical to suggest an ‘axis of evil’ Facebook group.

I don’t tend to blog much about my life outside work. This blog is about sharing new discoveries about the online world and the effect it has on Public Relations.

But this is a blog entry I’ve been thinking about for a longtime.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, and it seemed like everyone is booking in for romantic dinners, holding hands during long winter walks, spoiling each other in the name of love.

My partner doesn’t live here – he lives over two thousand miles (or 5.5 hours by plane) away – with a demanding job and lots of responsibilities. We’ve been together for nearly three years now, and it’s been over a year that he’s been in Cyprus.

Valentine’s Day without him wasn’t ideal, but without the internet, I’m not sure our relationship would be where it is right now (which is pretty great in case you’re interested!)

Skype has been the greatest tool – to be able to speak to each other face to face (and for free) – means that we can keep upto date with all the big and all the little bits of news that happen every day.

Absence may make the heart grown fonder but it’s Skype, MSN chat and Facebook that has kept us understanding how the other is feeling. Oh – and the flowers and card helped!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Social media is much more than just a Facebook page (although it’s a good start), there are many different ways of sharing your message and listening to what your public are saying about you.

Here’s a few ‘Fascinating Facts’ I’d like to share with you:

1. There are 113m active blogs being monitored by Technorati. 1.6 million new posts are added every day, the equivalent to 18 updates a second
2. 663k people download the BBC Radio 1 Chris Moyles podcast every month. 300k less than the ‘Best of Today’ from BBC Radio 4
3. Two years ago – YouTube didn’t exist. Now it features more that 76m videos and 2.8m user channels
4. The UK has 8.5m active Facebook users, 5m MySpace users and 4m Bebo users. The fastest growing Facebook demographic is the over 25s – and Bebo is the biggest network in Ireland and rapidly growing in Scotland.
5. Skype’s 276m registered users around the world have clocked up 100 billion minutes using free Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls since 2003
6. Wikipedia has 7m entries and over 6.5m people registered as “wikipedians” (check out sister site wikinews for collaborative citizen journalism)
7. Flickr has 2 billion images online and 3 – 5m pictures are added every day (although Facebook has 4.1 billion photos on its site!)
8. Micro-blogging is on the up. It’s predicted that 1m people are following Twitter

Your public are talking about you all over the web. Come on and join the conversation.