If you’re anything like me, you’re pretty overwhelmed with what seems like an infinite amount of social networking sites. I mean wouldn’t it be much nicer to see all these “friends” rather than clicking through the profiles of all these “friends?” Well in the meantime social networking sites offer a way to stay connected with old friend while also providing opportunity for artists, activists and entrepreneurs to mingle. Social network sites allow users to promote their work, find people to work with, and create communities that share interests, goals, and ideas.

Different social networking sites are geared toward different goals, from sharing good books to sharing plans to save the world to simply just making new friends. Here are just 10 of the hundreds of social networking sites available:

1) MySpace: Probably the most popular of the networking sites, MySpace offers an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. MySpace has greatly helped promote new bands, comedians, and social issues. The site is so popular it’s even become a verb aka “hey totally MySpace me!”

2) Facebook: Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and

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The MySpace Impact Awards honors MySpace members that have had a positive impact on our culture. Each month MySpace will choose a winner in one of the following categories: Community-building, Environmentalism, Health and Safety, Social Justice, Poverty Relief and International Development. Winners of the award receive exposure and MySpace promotion.

This month’s winner in the category of Social Justice is Why Tuesday? Watch their video below

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http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=28536735 GOOD, Kenneth Cole Productions and MySpaceTV have launched On Skid Row, a five-part documentary series that will shed light on a place that is invisible to most people; a place where 9,000 homeless people, whose average age is 9, live in abject poverty, card board boxes, surrounded by feces, urine, rats, prostitution and crime; where mentally ill are dropped off to fend for themselves. And this isn’t a far away place in the third world. In the words of the writer and narrator Sam Slovick, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, this is the first “Third World city in America.” This is Los Angeles’ Skid Row, the notorious neighborhood, which, ironically, is right next to LA’s financial district. On Skid Row is produced by Good Magazine, will be screened on MySpaceTV, and is sponsored by Kenneth Cole Productions. So and check out Part One of On Skid Row on MySpaceTV, at GOODMagazine or at Kenneth Cole Productions’ Awearness Blog. And to find out other ways you can to help alleviate homelessness, check out HELP USA.

Are online social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and others making us better or worse off socially and psychologically? It’s a question that analysts have been asking more frequently, with a growing number of crimes and suicides being reported upon with regard to said sites.

The general consensus of a six-chair round table, hosted by Stephen Dubner at the NY Times, reminds us not throw the baby out with the bath water. Social networking sites have both good and bad attributes, but unfortunately the negatives ones are generally more newsworthy, and therefore get more attention in many mainstream media outlets. There’s something to be said for taking a more sensible approach, say analysts.

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Combining the power of celebrity with the power of the Internet, Tom Hanks is making a difference with the Freeplay Foundation.

Serving as the foundation’s US Ambassador, Hanks has posted videos on both Youtube and MySpace to promote the Freeplay Foundation charity auction. The Freeplay Foundation supports rural poor areas of Africa by providing innovative and practical energy solutions and ensuring sustained access to information and education via radio. Through this mission the Freeplay Foundation created the Lifeline radio, as described on Freeplay’s site:

The Lifeline is a self-powered radio designed specifically for children living on their own, distance education or other humanitarian projects. Robustly constructed to operate in the harshest of conditions and climates, the Lifeline radio is rugged, colourful, easy to use and carry, receives excellent AM/FM/SW and plays for many hours non-stop on wind-up energy or solar power. It is available to aid and donor agencies for bona fide humanitarian initiatives.

Hanks auctioned autographed Freeplay radios on Ebay along with a personal letter and signed picture. All of the auction proceeds go towards Freeplay’s work in Africa.

To donate a Lifeline and learn more about the Freeplay Foundation visit freeplayfoundation.org

After months of being on strike, the WGA (Writers Guild of America) has voted to lift the strike and will begin writing again. After unofficial talks and scheduled votes today, the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) and the WGA have come to terms officially, with some writers returning to work as soon as tomorrow:

The vote on whether to lift the strike was held three days after the Writers Guild of America cinched its contract agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The strike vote was held over a 48-hour frame, with members able to vote in person at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills and Gotham’s Crowne Plaza Hotel, or via fax.

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Today’s featured book “Prude” on MySpace caught my eye. As a performer and writer who does a lot of sex-focused material I was intrigued by this book’s title.

Written by political analyst and commentator Carol Platt Liebau “Prude” explores how the sex-obsessed culture damages girls (and America, too).

Kind of ironic to feature such a book on MySpace, considering the countless underage members posting sexy self portraits all over their pages, right?

But I digress.

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As my fellow Takepart blogger Giulia pointed out below, MySpace announced today that they are planning making changes to their social networking site to protect teens from sexual predators. They have reached on agreement with the attorney generals of 49 states to make all profiles for those under 18 private and do a better job of responding to complaints and inappropriate content:

“Rather than treating the online and offline world differently, our goal has been, and will continue to be, to make our virtual neighborhoods as safe as our real ones,” said Hemanshu Nigam, the chief security officer for MySpace and its parent company Fox Interactive Media.

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Even after watching countless episodes of “ To Catch a Predator” on MSNBC I am still in awe of how disgusting and stupid some adults are when trying to solicit sex from minors.I am also amused by the use of 20 + cops “ To Catch a Predator” uses when taking down a perpetrator. I mean really? Does it really take 20 armed officers to arrest one pervert?But that’s beside the point…In effort to stop even more sickos from trying to get their cyber-paws on young teens, MySpace is also making some changes. Legal authorities in 49 states reached an agreement with MySpace to add new safety measures to the site that will help prevent misuse by sexual predators.

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You meet a new person, you think they are kind of cool - so what do you do? Look them up on myspace/facebook/other internet networking site of course! As we begin to create more and more profiles of ourselves on various sites, we also have to be more and more careful about the information we put on them, especially if we are applying for college:

According to a preview of unpublished research on the online activities of higher education institutions, a significant percentage of colleges and universities sometimes dig into would-be undergraduates’ social-networking profiles.At the same time, high school students accustomed to social-networking Web sites have flocked to new online sites that let them send information about themselves to colleges in hopes of gaining an edge over fellow applicants.”It’s only natural, given today’s students’ comfort with sharing personal information on a Facebook or MySpace,” said Tony Pals, a spokesman for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, a Washington-based organization of more than 900 private institutions. “Students are further motivated by the fact that college admissions has never been so competitive.” [Education Week]

Now might be the time to take down that picture you put up in order to impress that cute boy/girl and the time to put up the picture of you with your debate team friends at last weeks tournament.