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Mainstream social-networking sites such as MySpace and LiveJournal have long given users the ability to create and join specialized groups. More than 5,000 people belong to the black-and-white photography group on MySpace, for example.

The rapidly increasing popularity of sites such as MySpace and LiveJournal is leading more employees and students to blog from the office or school. This sort of blogging if causing:

-Inflamatory material: even beyond exposing office politics, the use of social networks in the workplace increase the likelyhood of objectionable content being on employee computer screens.
-Decreased productivity: more hours of the day are being spent on personal interests rather than work.
-Compromise of trade secrets: as more employees blog, the chance of sensitive company details being unintentionally revealed increases.

With the popularity of sites such as MySpace and LiveJournal contributing to the exponential growth of the emo community between 2001 and 2005. More and more often you hear about large scale internet celebrities making it in the real worlds, being offered contracts and so forth. E-famous business such as LoveBites and Bruises are making their living solely on the internet, using social networking sites such as these as their customer bases. But how long will this last? Forever?

For many teens, MySpace is the first asynchronous messaging system that they use regularly. Sure, they have emails but those are to communicate with parents/teachers/companies, not with friends. People check in daily to see what messages they get. This was starting to happen on Friendster, but server slowness killed this practice. This will make it quite tricky for teens to fully leave MySpace while their friends are still using it.

Identity development requires taking ownership of your presentation of self and really being able to personalize it, morph it to be “you” (even if you is copied from a site that tells you how to be you). Templates are not personalization. MySpace allowed users to really make the site their own.

LoveBites and Bruises has evolved with the users of Myspace, building a trusting relationship, figuring out how to meet their needs and cultural desires, providing them with features and really trying to give them what they were looking for. Maybe this is the key to creative success in the internet world?

Will internet creativity disspear if these sites were taken down? Or will it just start again somewhere else?

What’s at stake here is what is called “subcultural capital” by academics. It is a counterpart to “cultural capital” which is more like hegemonic capital. That was probably a bit too obscure. Let me give an example. Opera attendance is a form of cultural capital - you are seen as having money and class and even if you think that elongated singing in foreign languages is boring, you attend because that’s what cultured people do. You need the expensive clothes, the language, the body postures, the social connects and the manners to belong. Limitations are economic and social. Rave attendance is the opposite. Anyone can get in, in theory… There are certainly hodgepodged clothes, street language and dance moves, but most folks can blend in with just a little effort. Yet, the major limitation is knowing that the rave exists. “Being in the know” is more powerful than money. Having knowledge of what is big on networking sites will enable you to use your creativity to your advangtage.

Can users really make money by taking photographs and selling their own clothes and jewellery? Those who consider the internet a form of leisure may find the idea of this appealing. The customer base online is so large that high street stores are forced to cut prices, this must say somthing, surely?

The question is, how long will it last, before all the high street clothes stores vanish? And what will be left to replace them? Hospitals, Dentists, Opticians and public services? Will this really make the world a better place?

“If while you are presenting your offering to the altar, you remember your brother has a grievance against you, leave your offering there upon the altar and go make peace with your brother.” Jesus, according to Matthew 5:23, is where you can find these words.

Pretty powerful message about how we deal with the emotions that cause anger, hatred, fear and war in our world. I think what he was saying was, resolve the conflict you have within yourself first, then you will be able to resolve any ill feelings you harbor for others. Once that’s achieved, you are connected to your God on the altar of love, within you.

I don’t know how many millions of people want peace, I know it is a great number. We all try in our own ways to bring about resolutions to conflicts that are currently in the news. Everyone has his own way of dealing with these issues, many pray, many fight, many pray and fight, some ignore it, and others fuel it. No matter how you feel about it, your thoughts do effect what you focus on. If war is what I bring into my life, even though I’m against it, there it will be, I have attracted it. Whether I’m for or against it, the universe is giving me what I think about, war.

Each Sunday churches are filled around the world, united in the belief that we don’t want war. Each service has its own message on how to deal with the issue, and each person has his own belief about injustice. It may be our collective consciousness is really fueling what we pray to resolve. By lookiing to the other side to relent and think my way, I am trying to control an action, that restricts the universe from giving me what I want. My thoughts make resolution difficult unless I release myself and believe that peace already exists, that is my prayer and I see it in my mind, I live it and share it. I am not ignoring reality, for reality is peace. Which one do I want, war or peace? My choice, my thoughts, my life.

Dwight Eisenhower said; “One day the people of the world will want peace so much that the governments are going to get out of the way and let them have it.” We are our government, if our prayer is peace within ourselves, we will elect those who are peace, and that will be what we experience. There will always be contrast among diversity, that is how we learn and grow. From those lessons we can present ourselves, as we are, connected to All There Is, Love. My offering is peace. What’s Yours?

Hal Manogue is a poet and author of Short Sleeves A Book For Friends. Insightful thoughts for the 21st century. Hal’s 2006 collection and 2007 collection are available in bookstores and online. Visit Hal’s website: shortsleeves.net shortsleeves.net or blog: halmanogue.blogspot.com/ halmanogue.blogspot.com/ for more information about his work and life. Download a copy of the new E-Book,”Unite To Write” a collection of articles written by writers around the globe, that will inspire and fill you with useful information. It’s value is priceless. It’s Hal’s gift to you.