The United States presidential election has been the first major democratic process anywhere in the world where the use of social media has played a significant part in communications.

Of the eighteen candidates running in the primaries for the two main parties, nine had blogs, including both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.   Involvement in social networks was significant from the earliest days. Republican Mitt Romney was the first prospective candidate to launch a Facebook profile,  Democrat John Edwards set up a campaign headquarters in the cyber world of Second Life.  This resulted in a bizarre web 2.0 event when it was vandalised by the avatars of his political opponents.  Clinton used her web site to launch her campaign.

It was Barack Obama though who was the prime mover from the outset.  He engaged with most of the high profile social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  On the day that Barack Obama announced he was forming a presidential exploratory committee in January 2007, student government co-ordinator Farouk Olu Aregbe created a group on Facebook called “One Million Strong for Barack”.  The social web was critical to the Obama campaign in another fundamental way.  It played an important part in the funding of his bid for office.  In a campaign video directed at his supporters he said “Instead of forcing us to rely on millions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs, you’ve fuelled this campaign with donations of $5, $10, $20, whatever you can afford, and because you did, we’ve built a grassroots movement of over 1.5 million Americans.”  Obama’s success raising money via these small donations was achieved in a way never before possible as part of a U.S. presidential election campaign.

The 1960 election of John F Kennedy was thought to be point at which television became central to the democratic process.  2008 may well be the year that sees the critical intervention of the social web

This just in - music and film retailer HMV is launching its own social networking site getcloser.com where you can do - well - the sort of things you’ve been able to do on Facebook and MySpace for quite a while.

So why now? Will the punter feel that “the man” is trying to get in on the act? What will it do to drive sales that HMV’s regular e-shots don’t (and I should know, as they consistently empty my wallet).

Social media is constantly changing. Well that’s what we all thought with the migration of MySpace to Facebook but what if the online tools we’re using today could actually develop at the same pace as our attention span?

Maybe it’s me, but it feels like Flickr, Digg and Twitter have been around for so long, I can’t remember life before them!

On the anniversary of the launch of Facebook Platform, the company has announced on its blog a whole host of improvements coming soon. Many of you will have noticed the change in profile layout, something that I think is a massive improvement allowing me to find the most recent information quickly. More importantly, I’m no longer being distracted by all those apps I added a year a go.

The most interesting part of the post for me is the upcoming Facebook Connect:

“Facebook Connect is a new way to use applications, on the open web and not just on Facebook. Soon, you’ll be able to use your Facebook account to login and connect on websites throughout the web. Imagine never filling out another profile at a new site, or having to find your friends all over again. Facebook Connect will help make this a reality and allow you to use Facebook to share information from all over the web with your friends.”

So that’s my personal information following me around wherever I go on the web. Is it ok for me to be intrigued and scared at the same time?

I’ll be fascinated to see which sites sign up for this and what benefits there are for web developers in the short term. For advertising I can see huge benefits in terms of personalisation.

Flash forward to a point when facial recognition becomes common place in CCTV cameras and that personal data is not only following me around the web but down the street.

Now exactly when should I start to regret putting all that personal information about myself on Facebook? Perhaps when I have billboards shouting out at me?

Once it’s up there, it’s not just going to disappear, even if you ‘delete’ your profile. We’ve put into action a chain of events where information is the currency of the technology age. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Stalkr - (pronounced stalker) a person that you don’t know who tries to Facebook you or become your friend on MySpace or indeed on any social network.   The term also apples to someone you may know a bit who decides to relentlessly pursue a more active online discourse than you would like.  Would also apply to someone you are not following who frequently talks @ you on Twitter.  Essentially a  stalker in the 2.0 style of Flickr, Tumblr etc.