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There is only one place in the entire world where 12,000 people can come together to refute the claims that happy cows come from California, and there is only one place where a U.S. presidential candidate can have fewer “friends” than a ninth-grader from Wyoming. Welcome to the wonderful world of online social networking sites, a magical place where people from far and wide come together to form everlasting bonds from temporary “friend” statuses.

To put things into perspective, the U.S. population is slightly more than 300 million people. This also happens to be the number of subscribers to the social-networking giant, MySpace.

Social networking sites have been around for a while, but they have only gained notoriety in the past five years. The sites — most famously MySpace and Facebook — follow the same recipe: Start off with a basic profile, add the capability to upload pictures and then mix in a comment section, or a “Wall,” where other users can leave messages for the owner of the profile.

Now, with new subscribers to Facebook totaling more than 250,000 every day, the formula has changed quite a bit. On MySpace, users can embed videos, photos and songs. Users on Facebook can add applications to their profiles that range from a personality test to a daily quote from NBC’s “The Office.”

They can join groups of fellow Facebook users, like “The Anti-‘High School Musical’ Coalition of America,” or they can “SuperPoke!” their friends by electronically throwing a sheep at them, sucker-punching them or even sending out free hugs.

These social networking sites have become immensely popular due to one basic fact: the entire concept of these sites is brilliant. With the pandemic of the on-the-go lifestyle sweeping the nation, people don’t have time to maintain a social life, let alone sleep. Social networking sites make instant connections available at any time, whether it’s commenting on a friend’s funny picture at midnight or writing a quick little note on a best friend’s Wall before heading off to work or school.

Relationships can be formed over a common interest, such as snowboarding or painting, and then can be maintained by little actions each day. Most people can’t talk to all of their friends every day, but social-networking sites attempt to make this possible.

In the midst of the Facebook and MySpace revolution, business and marketing have become entangled in the web of social networking sites. The music industry has taken advantage of the sites, which typically pull in 32 million viewers per day, by allowing users to upload songs onto their pages, effectively advertising the artist and the album.

By contrast, MySpace users have turned the cycle around by using their pages as a launch pad into the music industry, including an Onalaska band, Aspenlane.

“We have fans from Russia; it’s kind of crazy,” said guitarist Andrew Santoso. Aspenlane has nearly 3,500 “friends” on MySpace; this large network of friends has led to offers to book the band for concerts across the nation.

This publicity gained from a sole network of 3,500 friends is a great example of “viral advertising,” which is essentially word of mouth publicity, except practically all of the exposure comes from Facebook or MySpace pages.

In January, Paramount Pictures created MySpace pages for all of the characters of the movie, “Cloverfield,” with the character’s comment section giving the audience a taste of the movie’s back-story. The movie shattered box-office records during its opening weekend.

And viral advertising isn’t just for the entertainment industry. All the presidential candidates have MySpace pages and official Facebook groups. On Facebook, the presidential candidates post notes, campaign updates and videos while they participate in cyber debates with fellow politicians.

While commercial and political uses might seem to spoil MySpace and Facebook for some, there are more altruistic uses. The same sites that try to entice people to vote for Obama also have been put to use raising funds and awareness for several different goals. The Facebook “Causes” application allows users to join and start their own causes and allow other users to join in supporting their causes or donate money.

For example, a staggering 3 million members have joined the “Support the Campaign for Cancer Research” cause and have raised nearly $60,000.

Some might wonder if social networking Web sites are too good to be true, and these hesitations might have merit. The world becomes a lot smaller when the entire Web has access to anyone’s personal information, including marital status and religious views.

The most notable downfall of the social networking craze is the fact that these sites most often mix one’s professional life with his social life, a mix that can lead to some dangerous results. For example, it is not uncommon for high schools, colleges or employers to comb through Facebook pages, inspecting the user’s profile photos for evidence of questionable moral behavior.

There are 1.7 billion user photos on Facebook, and these profile pictures, which can be uploaded by anyone and “tagged” with who is in the picture, have proven to be a distinct tool for school districts, colleges, and police in probing and persecuting illegal actions.

Since most new cell phones now have cameras, virtually everyone has the means to become paparazzi and catch a scandalous moment on film. Getting caught and being embarrassed has become easier because we live in a virtual age full of a lot more paranoia and even less privacy than yesteryear.

An ancient Chinese proverb comes to mind: “If you don’t want anyone to know, don’t do it.”

When it comes to using social networking sites, there is one main rule of thumb to follow: use common sense. If you don’t want personal information shared, then do not post it. Most sites nowadays have the opt-in feature where the user decides how much of his personal information is displayed on the page.

Sites like Facebook and Friendster also have made many strides in the privacy area by offering new protections, which include limiting the amount of information that a non-friend or a non-network person can see and the ability to authorize a friend request before the other users is allowed to see anything.

The same common-sense philosophy applies when it comes to choosing online friends. People are well-advised to only accept the requests of friends that you know. A little tip for accepting friend requests is that if you cannot match the face with the name (without looking at his or her profile picture), than you do not know the person well enough to be “friends” online.

From there, it would be smart to start with a few messages back and forth to find out how you know each other and whether you can trust the other person.

Some people might say that social networking sites are ruining the interpersonal relationships once sustained with letters and phone calls, but MySpace fans might counter that as long as people are connecting, does it really matter how they connect? Social networking sites allow people to re-establish those bonds lost after a cross-country move, a graduation or even something as simple as a lost phone number.

When used properly, these sites can enrich lives by creating relationships that might not have been forged otherwise. The opportunities presented by sites like Facebook and MySpace are endless; users just have to be smart about their actions and what they decide to post on the sites.

SEEING THE SITES

MySpace

PRO: Design your own profile allows users to create new skins and backgrounds for their pages.

CON: After being hacked in 2005, adware and spyware runs rampant through the site, with several accounts being hacked into everyday.

AUDIENCE: Teenagers will like to take advantage of the blog to write down their feelings and love notes. The site is amazing as far as discovering new music from independent artists.

Facebook

PRO: Easy to use, classic-style allows for broad audience with a large range of technical ability.

CON: Facebook users can add as many applications to their pages as they want. There are over 15,000 applications available, and the more the user adds, the more they slow down the site.

AUDIENCE: The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the over-25 crowd. Customizable approach to content on the page is a crowd pleaser for any age.

Classmates.com

PRO: Remember that dreamy boy from your chemistry class freshman year? Now, everyone can find that unforgettable classmate.

CON: Remember that girl who always used to bug you about signing her yearbook? Now, the people that you thought that you left behind can track you down.

AUDIENCE: Nostalgic people who want to reconnect with the people that they grew up with.

Friendster

PRO: The best features of Facebook and MySpace combined into one community.

CON: Although the site has the best feature from both Web sites, it lacks the ingenuity and ease of use of the other two. Friendster also has smaller networks than Facebook and MySpace.

AUDIENCE: Pre-MySpace crowd, typically older people who don’t really care that their network has over 500 people.

PLAYING IT SAFE

These tips for teens and tweens on avoiding trouble on online social networking sites were provided by OnGuard Online, a site devoted to promoting the safe use of social networking sites. For more information, visit onlineguard.gov.

Keep your information to yourself. Try not to post your real name, hometown, school’s name or anything else that people could use to find you offline.

Remember that once you post information online, you can’t take it back.

Consider not posting your photo.

Trust your gut if you have suspicions.

Create restrictions for the things that you post. Identify who you want seeing the information and make sure that those people are the only ones seeing it.

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