Online news sites have been buzzing recently over sites like MySpace and Facebook. Google and Microsoft were both in bidding wars for a small chunk (less than 2%) of Facebook. Microsoft won that war by shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars. This just shows that these online giants see these sites as great investments for the future.

According to Wikipedia, social network services are “primarily web based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on.”

MySpace is probably the most popular social networking site in the United States. And probably also the most infamous. MySpace became popular before most parents had time to even think about privacy issues. Several high profile television shows and new stories highlighted some of the dangers inherent with people (especially teens and children) revealing too much information online. Obviously, caution must be exercised when joining any Internet-based network.

The positive side of social networking is that a carefully set-up network can help users connect with others. Facebook was designed to deal with some of the flaws people found with other social networking sites. By default in Facebook, public user information is kept to a minimum, unless the user decides to reveal more. Users are encouraged to join networks from the start, instead of being stand-alone profiles in a large sea of user profiles. Many other features give Facebook users greater control over who they interact with online.

Many colleges and universities have begun creating groups in sites like Facebook. The communication potential for groups like these are immense. In fact, schools and groups within larger universities are beginning to start Facebook groups. Even some classes are getting in on this trend. These groups can also be great resources for keeping alumni connected with their alma mater.

Some schools and organizations are a little leery of having so much personal information controlled by someone else, or even stored on someone else’s site. ELGG and Ning offer a some solutions to these concerns. Ning gives organizations the ability to create their own social network, controlled by their administrators. ELGG gives anyone the ability to download the ELGG social network code and install in on their own server. Both systems have their pros and cons, but are worth considering for schools that are into do-it-yourself projects.

Hundreds of social networking sites exist. Google and Yahoo even each have one of their own. Each one has a slightly different spin than the others, or maybe even a slightly different target group. For a list of notable social networking sites, see this list on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites