It isn't only pornographers for whom cyberspace has become a heady mixture of Klondike, Shangri-La and Looking-Glass Land. Marketeers are obsessed with it. In this election year, you can bet that a dozen T-shirt-wearing wonks from across the political divide are even now trying to work out how to use the internet to speed their man to victory. It worked for Obama, the thinking goes, with his texted thank-yous, his "Jews for Obama" campaign (in which hip Jewish comedienne Sarah Silverman made an online film, The Great Schlep, urging Jews with retired parents in Florida to visit them before election day), his YouTube supporters such as "Obama girl" and all those blog-friendly speeches about Change and Hope. 

Could it work over here? To some extent it already has. David Cameron might have got in first with Webcameron — "Makes him look like a terrorist on al-Jazeera," one Tory grandee is reported to have snorted — but Labour have become enthusiastic Twitterers. Sarah Brown was one of the first, tweeting from the G8 summit in Italy — "Am hoping that no veal served at lunch again today. Have declined it twice this trip as just feel very strongly about it" — but to everyone's surprise, it is the famously prolix John Prescott who has proved rather adept at pithy 140-character jabs. Sample: "So this is the CHANGE we'd get from Cameron. His school had three toilets: 1 Gents, 1 Ladies & 1 for Chauffeurs!" 

Okay, it isn't a very good joke — and it might have been better had Prezza remembered that there isn't much call for Ladies' toilets at Eton — but it's a lot funnier than anything he delivered at a Labour party conference. 

Meanwhile, both party leaders are desperately courting Mumsnet, publishing blogs, doing webchats and updating their websites — though if you go to the Downing Street homepage, it's Sarah Brown's photo you'll find. "Read more about SARAH BROWN. Our SARAH BROWN SECTION contains biographical info, pictures, news and blog posts from the Prime Minister's wife." "Meet the Prime Minister,' by contrast, is relegated to an inside page. 

You might expect advertising professionals to be tempering all this e-optimism with some hard-bitten cynicism. It is, after all, our job to cast a critical eye over the more grandiose schemes of those who pay our bills.