"We took a leap of faith and rocketed into social networking this week with the launch of Spacebook, an employee intranet that features user profiles, group collaboration spaces and social bookmarking. This is similar to Facebook, except that it is restricted to NASA’s secure internal network. It’s open to every employee of NASA."

OpenAustralia was the first website to put federal politicians' financial interests online, such as stocks, shares, and gifts received - things that could potentially influence their behaviour in Parliament. Completely run by volunteers, OpenAustralia often appeals to programmers to donate their time. At a recent "hackfest" hosted at Google Australia, 40 volunteers worked on adding a number of new features, such as making the website accessible on mobile phones, and a tool that tells you who your state and federal member of Parliament.

As social media removes geographic barriers to intercultural communications, cultural identity still remains. How do culture and social media relate?