Hey Hey you’re served! Movements in social media

02/10/09 posted by Liz Niland

Social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, are proving to be tools with greater purposes than simply communicating with friends, clients, customers and associates.

This week saw the prime-time return of the pre-21st-century variety show Hey Hey It’s Saturday. Convincingly out-rating its respectable competition, the Hey Hey reunion special attracted more than 2.1 million viewers Australia-wide. Although host Daryl Somers was undoubtedly keen to see the show’s return, the Facebook page created by a 23-year-old woman from Broken Hill has emerged as the driving force behind the march down memory lane.

Considering the curtains closed on Hey Hey long before social networking and web design had hit its strides, Corrine Lawrence’s Bring Back Hey Hey It’s Saturday Facebook fan page, (which, at the time of writing, is rapidly closing in on 250,000 supporters) shows the power everyday people can have in the digital world.

But it’s not just about reviving forgotten cultural icons. This week a High Court judge in the United Kingdom has allowed an injunction to be delivered via Twitter. In a case of stolen identity, Donal Blarney, a right-wing political blogger, has had his name hijacked for use as the moniker of a masqueraded Twitter user. To get over the hurdle of internet anonymity, “Blaney’s Blarney Order”, as the injunction has now been named, will be served on the social networking site. On his provocative blog, Blaney wrote “Today is a great day for the overwhelming majority of well-meaning, decent people who use the internet and a bad day for bullies.”