"MySpace is the biggest youth club"

In America, maybe - it's Bebo in the UK. Who is advising Gordon Brown? Sounds like he's read Tom Steinberg if he's mentioning Mumsnet. No detail of course but his words are in the right place.

Number Ten Website, hat-tip Steven Clift:

*Question:*

You have offered solutions of juries, commissions and conferences, and yet at the same time we are seeing a massive growth in social networking, facebooks and the like that are actually describing a very dramatic different way that individuals engage with each other and with society. My question is really how can we ensure that perhaps voluntary groups that rely on time, passion and the money of these people don't go the same way of the participation in local democracy?

*Prime Minister:*

Well these are all very important questions. Let me start with the last one. We have set up a review into social technology and how it can benefit communities and we want to give prizes every year for those people who are making big advances in social interaction through using the new technologies. I mean it is true to say that in Britain today MySpace is the biggest youth club, and it is true to say that some of the great internet organisations are getting through to far more people, like Mumsnet or some of the organisations that are linking parents together in a way that formal organisations find difficult to do so. So yes we have got to encourage the new technology, we have got to make it possible for organisations to adapt to the new technology, and one of the reasons that we have tried to provide grants for innovative things is so that organisations can do so. And I think if we celebrate where advances are made in the internet that encourage community action, encourage community networks, that would be a very good thing to do.