What happens on MySpace…

MySpace and Facebook have become the place to be seen – it's a simple way for people, particularly students, to record their lives and connect with friends. It's a virtual hangout that has expanded across the United States – where students can post pictures, comments, online journals and other items to connect with each other.

And the hangout is going to get even bigger. According to MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, MySpace has plans to expand into Europe, Australia, and maybe even China. China currently has the one of the fastest growing Internet markets, particularly because of the wide accessibility to wireless, Internet-enabled devices.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought MySpace for close to $600 million last year and the site's popularity has been unstoppable. In January, MySpace was second to Yahoo in number of page views, according to comScore Media Metrix. More than 23 billion Internet users in the United States looked at MySpace pages.

But as MySpace looks to expand, the site's users are beginning to recognize the dangers of posting personal information online – available for anyone to see.

Facebook requires an e-mail address ending in .edu – it's geared toward college students, but is beginning to market to high school students as well. More than 6 million college students from more than 2,000 colleges and universities have profiles or personal Web pages on Facebook. Since it began marketing to high school students, almost 1 million high-schoolers have created profiles.

MySpace, on the other hand, is available to anyone, although a large percentage of its user base is teenagers. Sixty-one million registered users post pictures, comments, create personal blogs and more.

And colleges and prospective employers are using the freedom of the site to check up on each other. Students are reportedly being reprimanded by school officials for some postings while recent college grads are losing out on job possibilities for the same reason.

It might sound like a high price to pay for posting social pictures and comments in an open forum designed to connect people. Why does interacting in an open Internet, multi-media forum like these have to put so much at risk?

These sites were never intended to be viewed by authority figures. Where do the school house gates end? What happened to free speech?

Apparently the ramifications and consequences of posting a picture of yourself guzzling from a beer bong may have unintended effects.