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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When “Images of Darfur” photographer Jon Nicholson went with the UN Population Fund to the Sudan, he recalls seeing

Huge camps filled with people , you would think they would be safe, but they are turning into places where acts of violence take place… Hijackings of vehicles, attacks on camps… It’s coming at you from all sides… And the sensation that something can happen anytime anywhere is scary.

And yet, Nichols didn’t want to show images “that shock. I want the viewer to see the beauty and then reflect on the issue that is Darfur.”

Though beauty and genocide may seem contradictory, it is this very balance between the beauty and the tragedy, the “shock” and the almost tranquil photographs, which make the images so effective. It conveys the urgency and trauma of Darfur and the humanity of its victims, without forcing the viewer to turn away or recoil into a state of inaction, and passivity.

How does Nicolson do it? Look at the online exhibit. And when you’re done, and tell your representative to support the Women’s Health and Dignity Act.

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