Having never used Facebook or sent a tweet, and with no desire to do so, I am what you might call a social media sceptic...It troubles me to contemplate the effect it's having on government and public policymaking - when politicians feel the need to respond to the gossip and information generated with such rapidity by Twitter.

Government agencies are increasingly using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to engage the public, but they will also need to establish a clear, well-defined social media strategy to prevent potential backlash, according to industry watchers.

...United Arab Emirates ambassador to the U.S., Yousef Al Otaiba, was making an official visit when he received a phone call from a friend asking what he was doing in Texas. “How do you know I’m here?” the ambassador responded. It had been on Facebook, said Bader Bin Saeed, media director for U.A.E.’s embassy in Washington.

On July 16, 2010, The Huffington Post published an opinion piece authored by John Brown, former U.S. Foreign Service officer and currently Adjunct Professor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown University.

In the last week or so there have been kerfuffles about the blogging British ambassadors and the twitterific cake eating Americans.

Jared Cohen, the youngest member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, and Alec Ross, the first senior adviser for innovation to the secretary of state, were taking their tweeting very seriously...

As per the officials from the foreign ministry, very soon the foreign ministry shall be joining all through the social networking means.

When two young State Department officials took a delegation of Silicon Valley executives to Syria recently, they billed it as a chance to use the promise of technology to reach out to a country with which the United States has long had icy relations.