God knows there are tons of networking Web sites taking the internet (and our social lives) by storm: MySpace, FaceBook, Friendster, Jobster, Homester, Familyster, MySpaceBook, FaceSpace, MyFaceSter; the list is endless. Basically if you combine a place (home, school, work) or a relationship (friend, family, stalker) with the suffix “-ster,” “-space,” or “-book,” you are bound to find a networking opportunity.

A more recent addition to this steadily growing list of sites is Twitter – an exception to the previous naming rule. The site is crafted around a single question: What are you doing right now? As far as I know, this is the only thing you can do with a Twitter profile.

I find the whole idea of service like this entirely disconcerting. People already take their MySpace top friends listings seriously (I’m sure that somewhere out there, a relationship has ended over another guy knocking a boyfriend into the number two spot). Others exploit their Facebook status messages in order to broadcast their up-to-the-minute feelings to their entire friends list (“So-and-so is feeling sad and wishes someone would cheer me up.”). What is the allure in knowing what someone else does every minute of the day?

Imagine the messages:

“I’m eating breakfast. I sure love me that Special K!”

“At the grocery store! I buy milk!”

“I shouldn’t have eaten that two-week-old seafood for dinner! Going to the bathroom now! Will update from hospital if I have food poisoning!”

As things stand, I have never heard of offices using this site for co-workers, and I don’t think anyone would want their family or friends to know what they happen to do at any given moment. Twitter advertises that the service is as informative as you want it to be. You can update very infrequently, or turn off updates by certain people. Okay, great; but if you don’t want to display your whole life like the Truman Show or ignore people, why would you use the service to begin with?

As fun as it could be to obnoxiously use Twitter for purposes of personal humor, we’ve developed yet another outlet for our secret inclination toward social exhibitionism. We’re so starved for our fifteen minutes of Internet fame that we imagine that broadcasting our every move will interest someone, anyone, enough that they will continue to read. Between Internet networking and blogging, everyone and their mother – often quite literally – crave that acknowledgment, whether in Web site hits or comments.

As a response, I’m working on my own project. I’d like to combine the personal information of Facebook profiles and the University’s Find People online search, the visual broadcasting aspect of YouTube and the constant status update capabilities of Twitter. That way, people can find out who you are, see exactly where you are, and read/watch what you’re doing at any given moment.

I’m calling it “House Arrest.”