As far as social networking sites go, Facebook’s popularity is unmatched. It’s a good thing it isn’t real life, otherwise I’d be getting poked all the time. The comedy group “Idiots of Ants” portray what it’d be like if people took social networking features and acted them out in person.

The video goes into detail showing a satirical Facebook chat amongst friends which includes writing on each others wall, accepting or ignoring friendship requests and even tagging photos all in real life.  Can’t wait to see them act out all of those extra apps no one cares about.

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The main reason you bought a Playstation 3 was probably due to Killzone 2 or Playstation Home, Sony’s new online service that’s supposed to be something like Xbox Live meets Second Life. You and your friends can meet up with your avatars, talk, chat, shoot the shit and so on. Oh, and more importantly, you can play games together too.

As of today, Sony is accepting applications for the closed beta test of the Home service. Right now it only looks like Japan is lucking out but the US market could soon follow:

Applications are initially being accepted from Thursday until Aug. 11 from users in Japan only. Sony expects to offer access to about 10,000 gamers during the beta, which will begin in late August.

During the beta stage users will be able to play the games that make up Bandai Namco’s “Namco Museum” package, which include PacMan, in the service’s “Game Space.”

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Step aside, Second Life. There’s a new time-wasting virtual social network just released by Google. It’s called Lively and it’s your ticket to the cyber world, complete with emotes and customized avatars. Screw that pay to play bullshit on Second Life. Hell, no one wants to hear your lame cyber concert anyways. Play on a real stage or go home!

Lively’s client is free to download and runs with IE or Firefox. Images and videos are viewable in Lively, as well as the ability to embed websites, like your Tumblr or other blogs into your Lively “living space.” Though the content isn’t quite there on Lively (lacking an economy like that of Second Life), it’s still free to play and you’ll feel less dorky playing it than you would with Second Life. Give it a try and let us know how it is.

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When Facebook announced that they would be rolling out their new Facebook Chat service, all that was said was that it would be rolled out very gradually to the public. What we didn’t know is that the social networking service was systematically rolling out the new service to their favorite group of Ivy Leaguer’s first.

The first people who were gifted with the new service were members from the Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, Berkeley, Brown, Dartmouth and MIT networks within Facebook, who were all among the first communities to give Facebook a following. We guess allowing those users to get first dibs is there way at giving back to the community. By the way, I’m still banned from requesting new friends, thanks to the “You might know these people” feature, and me, adding 5 people in successive fashion. Come on, Facebook! — Andrew Dobrow

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Probably the smartest move MySpace, as a business and livelihood, has chosen to take so far. News Corp Inc. announced that MySpace.com will be teaming with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to inform the public of Amber Alerts.

For those of you born in a cage, Amber Alerts are the national alert system through law agencies to signal that their is a possibly kidnapped child. Using this system, pictures and last known whereabouts of the child are distributed to all law officials, media outlets, and now, to MySpace.com.

This partnership is somewhat of an odd pairing considering the situations that children get in on MySpace. Though as a business decision, it’s a smart way to get the hawk eyes off of its back for now. Other then the evident selfish reasons why MySpace would make this agreement, having alerts spread through MySpace will be an effective way of spreading the news and identity of the missing child. Increasing the kids chance of a safe recovery.

MySpace has also recently announced it’s development of software that will allow parents to monitor their childs use of MySpace, while also keeping tabs of the age and location the child says they are from. — Andrew Dobrow

MySpace to Distribute Amber Alerts [PhysOrg]