Cross-posted from The Wardman Wire:
When it comes to social media, Facebook is pretty much it as far as MPs go. For example, of the Liberal Democrat Shadow Cabinet members, 100% have a public email address, 90% have a website (the exceptions being in the House of Lords), 72% are on Facebook, 7% blog (and for another 7% there are party blogs covering their portfolio, even though they do not blog personally), and 3% are on Twitter. None have an active MySpace or Bebo presence (though there’s one that is now defunct).
Similar patterns – heavy email use, slightly lighter website coverage, many Facebook profiles, fewer bloggers and Twitter bringing up the rear – occur across all the main political parties.
This is not just a matter of new services taking time to catch on; blogging, after all, has been around for much longer than Facebook and the first politicians on Facebook came years after the first blogging politicians.
So what is it about Facebook that makes it attractive to MPs?