As Facebook hits 150m users, Social Networking sites get 1 in 10 UK Christmas Internet visits

You're in good company, Bryan. Technology writer Bill Thompson wrote earlier this week on the BBC News website about how social media were now a part of his family's Christmas.

In Having a very connected Christmas he explained how his family members happily spent Christmas together at home, but were equally happy to communicate with their wider circle of friends using social tools like Microsoft Messenger, Facebook, and Twitter on their laptops and iPod Touch.

As a technology writer he knows that this "is still relatively unusual", and that he is in an usual position of living in a "wired household" where technology is not seen as intrusive or unwelcome.

However, he is confident that this approach will become more common this year. "The big change we are going to see through 2009", he writes, "will be the breakdown of the association between the network and work even for those who would never describe themselves as geeks".

I largely agree that, like the embedding of the mobile phone in almost all social spheres, social media will become a given for many people in the next year or two.

"So when we spend our holidays online," concluded Thompson, "it is not because my children have become sad geeks, mirroring their father's dependence on technology, but because our friendship networks now have such a significant online component that to ignore it and go offline over the break would be an unfriendly thing to do".

So, is your charity planning a more social media-focused approach to its 2009 Christmas fundraising campaign? One that is active over the Christmas holiday?