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Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently met the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt Photograph: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP   The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, seems to think that Facebook will help to build David Cameron's Big Society: he tweeted yesterday that he had met Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg , who "had good ideas on improvement [sic] digital culture in policy making". This makes the Big Society look an idea even more vacuous than it already appears; but on reflection the minister is right to ask whether social networks will be important in the politics of the future. If they are, they won't be Facebook. Facebook is profoundly anti-democratic, and not just because it is a commercial operation. Facebook politics involve no real commitment any more than sending an email does. Nothing could more quickly tell you that a cause was stupid or irrelevant than the news that a Facebook group has been formed about it which ...

Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told a group of editors Sunday that he is confident that newspapers will find new ways to make money online by harnessing the vast reach of the Internet. Media executives have accused Google of draining readers and advertising from newspapers' Web sites. But in a speech to open the annual conference of the American Society of News Editors, Schmidt said Google recognizes that newspapers are vital to democracy and provide a critical source of online content. "We understand how fundamental your mission is," he said. Schmidt predicted that the news business will find a new model, based on a combination of advertising and subscription revenue. He said Google hopes to facilitate that, but he offered no specifics.