Thanks to the rise of social media, news is no longer gathered exclusively by reporters and turned into a story but emerges from an ecosystem in which journalists, sources, readers and viewers exchange information. Journalists are becoming more inclined to see blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media as a valuable adjunct to traditional media.

The shift to online media, and in particular, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, represents the growing trend of people turning to online sources for news and world events. This presents a unique opportunity for Israel's public diplomacy to penetrate global public opinion.

If Facebook were a country, its membership would make it the third most populous in the world. As its “population” continues to grow, the social network finds itself adapting to, and navigating within, a global sphere in which the importance of public diplomacy has also grown.

Social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Diggit, live video, texting, bloggers, websites, My Space, and other outlets, now focus on the power of mass protests to rally together to topple governments and spread messages to fellow countrymen, and ultimately tell their story to the rest of the world.

One of the greatest lessons in social media is that everything begins with listening and such is true for any form of leadership. Governments and their administrations have much to learn. Not only are new media channels rich with insight, they are also interactive. There are people on the other side who have expectations of recognition, acknowledgement, and engagement.

Two years ago, Iranian activists used social media sites as engines to organize massive anti-government demonstrations. But now, activists say, the limitless freedoms available online are proving to be a distraction from real-world dissent.

With a predominantly English speaking subscriber base, it has been hard to view Facebook’s demographics as representative of the Arab consumer. At the same time, no homegrown social network has been successful in appealing to Arabic language Internet users in numbers and the region’s Arabic language social media environment has remained a fragmented one. This is now changing: fast.

It's never been so easy to find out what people whose experiences of the world are very different to our own, think and feel. Often the perspectives of an organisation's staff and would-be service users can be as different as any two people on Twitter, and as such, they may never cross paths...this is where both our greatest challenges and opportunities lie in the social web.