If you thought teenager and adults were wasting waaaay too much time on networking sites…well now babies are getting a piece of that internet socializing drug. According to the New York Times:

We’re seeing a rising tide of parenting interest on social networks, said Adam Ostrow, the editor of Mashable, a news blog about social networking sites. Recently, I’ve noticed a lot of Facebook users are adding their children to their profiles.

Mr. Ostrow sees parents’ posting on behalf of their children as a natural evolution of say, Twittering about oneself. [New York Times]

Hmmm, I wonder what sort of comments babies leave other babies? “OMG you heart Ernie and I heart Burt 4eva 2 getha!”

But come on, this is all kind of creepy right? Is this really just harmless fun or is a

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One of the best panels I sat in on was Viral Videos and Social Networks: How Campaigning has Changed Forever, moderated by Fred Goldring, executive producer of the Yes We Can video and former Chairman of Rock the Vote. Will.I.Am himself was there to talk about the genesis of Yes we Can project along with Facebook’s Chris Kelly, Marc Morgenstern, Executive Director of Declare Yourself, and Max Berstein from Common Sense NMS Political Director.

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Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and writer of Charlie Wilson’s War, is moving out of the political realm and onto the internet. His next project will be about none other than FACEBOOK! A wonderful killer of time and a sometimes (unwanted) portal into our past lives, Facebook has no doubt changed how we network and how we keep relationships.

Sorkin’s film will focus on the beginnings of the social networking giant:

‘I’ve just agreed to write a movie for Sony and producer Scott Rudin about how Facebook was invented,’ Sorkin wrote in his introduction on the group page. ‘I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I’ve started this page.’

The film is likely to look at how, following its creation in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg in his university dorm, Facebook quickly became an internet, business and social phenomenon with more than 100 million users worldwide. [Guardian UK]

Do I really need Facebook invading my movie world? One of the reasons I love movies is that I’m able experience and visit places that are not my computer..

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These top 10 green Twitter feeds, courtesy of the Huffington Post, are a great way to catch up on all things green - over 2 million collective users cover the gamut in everything from renewable energy to local organic eats. Twitter, for those unfamiliar, is a free micro-blogging and social networking site that enables users to upload “tweets,” or small messages under 140 characters about a variety of topics, including those of the sustainable variety. Check out a quick list of our eco-favorites after the JUMP —->

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If you’ve tried to play Scrabulous today, the addictive Facebook application, you’ve no doubt been deeply disappointed. As it stands the makers of Scrabulous decided to block the application in the middle of the night for all of it’s North American users. This comes after Hasbro sued the Scrab folks after they made their own version of “scrabble” for Facebook. (read more about the legalities of it all HERE).

Of course you can login to the separate Scrabulous website but that almost seems like too much work..

I don’t know about you, my reasons for logging into Facebook just got cut in half…

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The Facebook-based viral fundraising application ‘Causes’ just released stats for its first year of operation.

• 12 million users –60,000 of whom Facebook says are daily users
• Supporting over 80,000 causes
• $2.5 million donated to 19,445 non-profit organizations

Also worth noting: The organization snagged the URL causes.com, which re-directs to the Facebook app. (That couldn’t have been cheap.)

Via donorpoint

A teenage girl named Crystal has turned to Youtube to share her story of being raped. According to CNN, Crystal is among dozens of young people who are turning to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to talk about sexual assault.

Sadly, the comments which appear below the Youtube video are disgusting. Many think the girl is putting on an act, while others support the attacker. Everything about this makes me sick: the fact that a girl who claims she was raped has no where to turn but to the internet, that people commenting on the video think rape is funny, and that rape even happens at all. I’m really not sure what to make of all of this.

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Social networking, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Youtube… Did you ever stop to think how our interaction on these sites would transfer to the real world? Are the ways we keep in touch actually normal? The answer might lie below:

Perhaps when we left high school, we were really supposed to leave high school….

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Facebook will add new safeguards to keep younger users safe from sexual predators and cyber bullies. These new safety features will include banning convicted sex offenders from the site and finding better ways to verify users’ ages and identities.

The agreement was announced by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in a deal along with other attorneys general around America. “This marks another watershed towards social networking safety,” he said. It will “protect kids from online predators and inappropriate content,” he added. It comes on the heels of a similar comprehensive agreement that 49 states and Washington, DC, made with MySpace last January. [BBC]

Keep your kids safe from Internet danger, and check out http://www.netsmartz.org. NetSmartz is an Internet safety resource from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America that uses the latest technology to create high-impact educational activities for even the most tech-savvy kids of any age group.

While I find Facebook to be a tad overwhelming with all it’s bells and whistles, I do think it does a snazzy job at bringing folks together and adding adorable little time wasters to our lives. One of those cute, strange, kinda useless Facebook actions is the upcoming “National Awesome Facebook Status Day.” on May 6th. The idea is that every day, your Facebook status describes your normal, average life and on this special day users are encouraged to spice up their “status.”As explained on the “National Awesome Facebook Status Day” page:

for one day, let your Facebook status live out the adventure you know you’ve always wanted. For one day, fight a bear. Rescue a child from a burning building. Go to the moon. Do whatever you want to or at least tell the world that’s what you’re doing.

Is “National Awesome Facebook Status Day” a big way to in society? Not really. But perhaps in a very small, very silly way it is, by putting users in a better mood and maybe even inspiring some to actually make their fake status a reality.

With 14, 938 confirmed participants “National Awesome Facebook Status Day” is just one of the ways in which the internet gets people collectively doing stuff and that will never cease to amaze me.