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In a time before the web had been invented I met a man and fell in love.  The year was 1989 and it was a textbook romance. Our eyes met across a crowded room (a lecture theatre inside Brighton Polytechnic) and - following a five-year courtship - we got married. It’s what people did in those pre-web days.

Sadly, the marriage did not last, and in the late 90s I found myself back on the dating scene, in world that had been revolutionised by the invention of the web. Being to some extent shy around people I don’t know – and a bit of a geek – I perhaps naturally turned to the web with hopes for a new relationship.

While I would never dream of registering with a dating agency ‘in the real world’ (again, too shy) a number of commercial dating sites had sprung up online that seemed to offer a more attractive alternative – the ability to browse profiles of potential love matches from the privacy and comfort of home without the pressure of making contact until I felt ready.

Meeting new people online is easy. When it comes to dating however, maybe the web makes it a bit too easy to make connections that run fast but not deep. Online relationships that are characterised by frequent, frantic email exchanges may burn brightly to begin with, but can quickly burn out.

You can learn too much about a person too soon when you have email and texts and web cams at your disposal. I may be an old romantic, but I still believe true love is a slow burner whereas the web is all about speed (think about it, when did you ever hear anyone praise the web for enabling them to do anything more slowly?!).

Online dating is a lot of fun at first, but before long you may find your initial optimism tempered by cynicism. I registered my profile with a number of dating sites and learnt one thing pretty quickly; everyone looking for love online registers with the same sites so you will inevitably run into the same love matches time and again. Like a school of brightly coloured goldfish swimming round and round in the same murky water, some of the people you will encounter will have distressingly short memories. You may feel you’ve made a connection with someone special on Tuesday, only to discover that they’ve completely forgotten who you are and what you discussed by Thursday.

I never found love through a dating website. But I did make a number of very good friends through such sites and if you approach online dating with friendship in mind I suspect you will be less likely to meet with disappointment. However, I did find love elsewhere online, when I wasn't particularly looking for it. Such is the nature of love. It finds you.

I met a guy in a chat room that had nothing at all to do with dating. We made eyes at each other through our webcams, messaged each other furiously for a couple of days, met up, fell in love and moved in together. Without the pressure of being on a mission to find love the relationship flourished. Or so it seemed.

Unfortunately, I must add a sad epitaph to the story. I soon discovered that my new love was an online infidel, simultaneously involved with a number of women - each believing they were the only woman in his life. Although I was fairly convinced that I was the only one with whom he'd 'taken things offline', the seeds of suspicion had been sown and once the extent of the deception had been uncovered it was goodbye to him and goodbye to online romancing as far as I was concerned.

For some, online dating clearly has worked. A number of my close friends met their husbands and wives through dating websites and are very happily loved up with mortgages and children. But I don’t think it will ever be for me. There is just something about that first lingering look from across a crowded room that online dating cannot, as yet, replace. But the huge commercial success of online dating tells me that that this is an area of life where technology will continue to evolve rapidly.

Perhaps one day the web will be able to deliver the same frisson as that moment when a handsome stranger catches your eye. If it does for you, don’t forget to take it slow.

There's been a shift in the Philbin household. At one time I fretted over what my daughter might be putting up online, but over the past couple of years the tables have turned and she began challenging me.  "You’re not putting that on Twitter are you?"

I'll confess I was a bit over-keen at first, though I still think the time I caught the cat racing down the hallway with a mouse in her mouth was a triumph of photo-journalism (the mouse survived).

But it does raise serious questions. What's okay for you to share isn’t always okay for family or friends. What for you is a moment of parental pride or exasperation, your children might see as an absolute betrayal. You never know what you might inadvertently reveal. "Your skirting boards could do with a touch up" was one comment after the mouse incident.

In our digital world it's important to remember your wry remarks and cute pictures are there to be uncovered by your children's friends, their grandchildren and certainly their future employers. Digital identity expert Dave Birch draws a firm line round family life. "Our pictures of the kids, friends, vacations and the house all go on to our friends-and-family blog, which is password-protected and always has been."

When it comes to privacy, everyone has different boundaries. They're not easy to second guess and I think it's important to ask. So you might see stunning views from a walk or Wembley stadium on my Twitter stream but you won’t see who I'm with or necessarily know why I'm there.

'Documentally', a popular blogger and social media consultant, says that when he first started using social forums his profile picture was a mash-up of his face with Che Guevara because he felt his anonymity was too valuable to sacrifice. "I didn't want a face and I didn't want a name. But now I feel differently", he says. "It's only when people can see you, have a real sense of who you are, that new connections can be made. I have to be myself, not a shadowy figure. Opening up is the only way to share."

One of the hardest decisions I made recently was whether to tell my Twitter followers about my mother's death. Grief is intensely private, yet I felt odd stepping round it. After a few weeks, I wrote a very brief blog and my family was immensely touched by the warmth of the response.

Internet technologist Benjamin Ellis says he's also had some really positive benefits from revealing more about himself online, from better birthday presents to meeting new and interesting people who would never have otherwise found him. But recently he had a reminder that there were people out there who knew much more about him than he did about them or indeed about himself. "Because of my online writing, an older half-sister I have never met, who lives on the other side of the world, was able to find my father and myself when she decided to track us down".

For the most part, our social networks are benign. There are issues about bullying and it obviously makes sense not to geo-tag your home or let cyber-space know you're on holiday for a month.

What we can't predict is how, as technology moves on, people may be able to aggregate and analyse our data in ways we can't even imagine. As Benjamin Ellis says, "Modern face recognition software, combined with our online photo libraries and mobile phones that now track the location of where pictures are taken, may mean much, much more of our life becomes "discoverable" in the future." He has also set some basic rules for himself: "I never post anything if I am tired, emotional, or under the influence of too much coffee or wine!"

In a nutshell, be cautious. Don't imagine you can be protected by operating under a pseudonym, because search engines make it much easier to put two and two together. And if you share something personal or private with someone who's active in the online world, Benjamin suggests you "make it clear it’s NSFTB! (not suitable for the blog)", a term coined by marketeer Seth Godin.

But there are advantages. Dave Birch says "I'm a bit jealous of this generation: when they are my age they'll be able to look back on school, university, gap year, work, parties and weddings by going online. Whereas, it took me a week to find half-a-dozen photos from my university days for my 30-year reunion."

Many politicians have adopted Twitter as a means of making an announcement and loads of them will engage properly.

Unless you’ve been in hiding since May you’ll be aware that we’ve had a new Government in the UK for a few months. Like Barack Obama's election to the US Presidency in 2008, the UK general election was predicted to be the first in which social media would play a large part. This didn’t in fact happen; it was there in the background but the first ever Prime Ministerial debates on TV meant that if this was anything it was the television election.

It was possible to get a bit more politically active through your computer, though - or at least to make a start. Many politicians, for example, have adopted Twitter as a means of making an announcement and loads of them will engage properly. Novelist turned Conservative MP Louise Mensch is @louisemensch, Lord Prescott is @johnprescott and there are numerous others. Lord Prescott certainly replies to things in person, but Barack Obama (@barackobama) is a little busier and he’s certainly never replied to me.

More opportunities to have your say

Politicians and interest groups often use electronic media, whether Twitter, Facebook, blogs or a more straightforward website, which anyone with a connection can find.

In the last few years a number of electronic petitions websites have sprung up such as petition.co.uk, and famously Number Ten.

If you set up or sign a petition then of course you can publicise it through Twitter, Facebook or other social websites - you can see how the petition might grow. Inevitably many pressure groups have emailing lists as well, which you can use as a jumping off point for further activity and to get more involved.

It’s great because...

For people with computers and an internet connection this is of course good as it makes it easier to get involved and means the privilege of access to more information. For instance the website TheyWorkForYou.com allows people to see how their MP is voting in parliament and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News site publishes details of what ministers claim on expenses. If you like Twitter, Tweetminster is a place where you can find your MP and post a message to their account.

It’s not great because...

The flipside of this is that if the bulk of political engagement shifts too much towards the electronic media too quickly then there’s a risk that people who aren’t fully digitised will become disenfranchised. My job keeps me at a computer most of the time, I’m writing and usually have an internet browser running in the background. I see my emails as they come in and I check Twitter frequently.

Political inactivism

To look at another possible drawback I refer us again to Lord Prescott of Twitter. Everyone on Twitter has a little picture next to their name which appears next to all of their Tweets. Lord P has a slogan instead, 'Save NHS Direct' (or at least he does as I write). Other people use their Twitter pictures to carry banners - their picture appears with 'Save 6 Music' underneath it.

As part of a considered campaign to raise awareness these things are useful. The problem is that some people put something up online and think they’ve done it. They tick the box, they sign a petition, they alter their picture a bit and that’s their bit of activism for the day.

Politicians, meanwhile, aren’t fooled; they can spot a political move that didn’t actually involve as much effort as getting dressed and leaving the house and I have no doubt these things will be weighted accordingly.

If online engagement with politics and the decision making processes is used as a substitute for the real thing then frankly I have doubts as to its effectiveness. As part of an overall effort, though, as one of the prongs in an overall strategy in getting something done or drawing attention to a good cause, the electronic media should be an excellent starting point.

It's Strictly Come Dancing time again - and, as with many TV shows recently, social media seems to be an increasingly loud and slightly nagging voice in the background.