Proving that it really wants to be the hip Internet administration, the WhiteHouse now has a Twitter account, a Facebook page, and a MySpace Page. Check out the Whitehouse Twitter account, Whitehouse Facebook account, and Whitehouse MySpace account here.

That darling grapevine of the 21st century, Twitter, is being socially indicted and implicated in the increasing panic over the currently-anticipated swine flu epidemic. According to Evgeny Morozov, a fellow at the Open Society Institute, in an article published on the website of the Foreign Policy magazine, “having millions of people wrap up all their fears into 140 characters and blurt them out in the public might have some dangerous consequences.”

I recently posted on Twitter that I had the secret to knowing if somebody is following you or not on Twitter. I had so many people ask me about it that I’m going to reveal the secret now.

A new study about teens who talk about teen sex on MySpace, and other risky behaviours in their MySpace profiles and pages, has found that if someone in a position of authority, such as a doctor, who is also on MySpace, contacts them about the risky behaviour being discussed, they may stop talking about it on MySpace. No kidding?

For those who are constantly checking both Twitter, and Gmail, now you can have your cake and eat it too! Twitter Gadget is a Gmail gadget that allows you to both read and post to Twitter right from your Gmail interface!

According to Linked-In, “frolleagues” – people who are business colleagues that beg a friend-style social networking connection from you, are increasingly becoming a threat to one’s professional standing.

The rise in social media sites such as Facebook and Myspace has been a boon for prosecutors, who are finding incriminating pictures on such sites – pictures which have been admitted as evidence in court, and used to increase penalties, sentences, and prison time!

The social networking generation gap technology has created is smaller than you may think. Online social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook used by adults? You bet! Facebook and Twitter are increasingly being used by Internet business people and entrepreneurs to reach both customers and peers. Taking a moment to update your Facebook status, or send the occasional message (“tweet”) on Twitter can pay big dividends! It’s the digital age and social networking online is a big part of online business! No longer are adults asking “What is Facebook?” – instead it’s the teens complaining that “Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated with grownups!”

The social networking site FaceParty has deleted and banned all users over the age of 36, saying that a new law requires them to ban all sex offenders, and that people over the age of 36 are most likely to be sex offenders. Yeesh!

Lori Drew, the Missouri mother who posed on MySpace as ‘Josh’, a 16-year-old boy, drawing 13-year-old Megan Meier into a fraudulent and faux relationship that ended tragically with Megan Meier taking her own life, has been named in a federal indictment and summoned to appear in US District Court in Los Angeles in June.

Google has released a Preview Version of Friends Connect, a new service that lets website owners easily add social networking features. For website owners the benefits of Google Friends Connect are clear; adding social networking features to an already popular site encourages visitors to stay longer, engaging with other users and with new and updated content, as well as providing content of their own in the form of comments, reviews and message board entries.

The rise in social networking has created an information management and overload problem for many users known as the “Data Portability” problem. The problem starts with authentication, includes having data (profile data, media or otherwise) in several different sites and in different versions, and is compounded by the fortress mentality of many social networking sites. These factors make it difficult for users to manage their online identity and control who sees, at what level of granularity, their personal data. The data portability movement is meant to make this easier. On the other hand, it may also make it easier for social networking sites to buy, sell, and use your data. So how come nobody is talking about the privacy concerns inherent with data portability?