"This is our 10th Annual Year in Review" and "we have very proud of what we have been able to accomplish all these years" said Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline. 2006 will be remembered as the year that social networking or Web 2.0 first have a big impact in American politics.
According to the Report, "YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia and other social networking sites played an important and occasionally decisive role in US campaigns.
Vlogging, or Video blogging, became also a popular phenomenon among politicians and is sure to become more widespread both nationally and internationally in the coming year. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the first high-level politician to start her own video blog in June of 2006.
This year, PoliticsOnline hasen’t chosen one Web site as "Web Site of the Year", but rather a collection of Web 2.0 sites. Web 2.0 refers to the online collaboration of users through social networking, wikis and user general content.
At international level, Al Quaeda and related terrorist organizations have continued, in 2006, to use the Internet to connect, plan and execute attacks with increasing sophistication. The use of social networking sites and anonymous email accounts have made it easier than ever for recruiting and fundraising in cyberspace.
If, in American Politics, we have to follow Senator Barack Obama, called the "JFK of the Net", PoliticsOnline suggests don’t forget France, because "probably more than any other country, the French political blogosphere has quickly exploded as a force to be reckoned with and no one has done it better than Segolene Royal, the new, non-traditional who clearly understand the power of the technology".
