people to get together and control their own destiny

nation-state

Facebook has become the third-largest nation

THE world's largest social network announced that it had reached 500m members on Wednesday July 21st. If Facebook were a physical nation, it would now be the third-most populous on earth. And if the service continues to grow as rapidly as in the three months to July, it will reach one billion in about 15 months—almost the size of India. Not least because of its gigantic population, some observers have started to talk of Facebook in terms of a country. “[It] is a device that allows people to get together and control their own destiny, much like our nation-state,” says David Post, a law professor at Temple University, Philadelphia. For more on social networks and statehood see article.

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nation-state

(nā'shən-stāt')
n.
A political unit consisting of an autonomous state inhabited predominantly by a people sharing a common culture, history, and language.