What is the world coming to? First a Twitter shaped change to the curriculum has been proposed, that would see primary school children learning how to use the microblogging tool; and now it has been publicly revealed Birmingham University is to offer an MA course covering blogging and social networking. Apparently, the course is "not for freaks or IT geeks" (by freaks do they mean: 'a person or animal on exhibition as an example of a strange deviation from nature; monster' coz' that's what the dictionary says) well that's what the guy who put the course together thinks. Good god, have we not realised how fickle the internet is yet? There's a very very strong possibility this course will be rendered obsolete after a year or two.

The futile course will cover what people can do on Facebook and Twitter and how they can be utilised for communication and marketing purposes. It's been revealed there has been "significant interest in the course already" and why wouldn't there be? Who wouldn't opt to take easy street if it means achieving an MA qualification at the end of it? I know a bunch of students who would jump at the opportunity.

MySpace's plummet to the bottom of the social networks list was almost inevitable wasn't it? I mean, it sure has been trailing behind in visitor numbers for quite some time now, not to mention that Facebook overtook it in the popularity stakes AGES ago. And now that microblogging phenomenon Twitter has been thrown into the social networking mix and Bebo has seen in a growth in users, MySpace has been pushed even further to the back of the class. Since its launch five years ago, MySpace has seen some good times, some great times and even some punch the air high five fantastic times, but is now suffering severely in the popularity department and is losing key staff in these tough economic times. There's even speculation an exodus is to follow.

It must be a sad time for MySpace staff and founders. The site that was once synonymous with the term social network has ultimately been left out in the cold and is now half the size of its rival. Users who would once take a bullet for their favourite social network, have now migrated to the more popular sites - that includes a lot of the musical folk too (who said the internet was a fickle place?). Just to give you an example of how bad things really are, MySpace had 124 million monthly uniques last month; Facebook in contrast received 276 million unique visitors, giving it a traffic increase of %16.6. To put it further into perspective, the sites were about neck and neck around June last year. I'm sure I don't need to tell you, MySpace has taken a serious blow.

It's getting more and more apparent as each day passes and worryingly, more of our parents are hitching a ride on (the very late) social networking bandwagon, and are signing up to Facebook in their droves. But that crucial question rears its ugly head again - do you want your parents reading about your latest naughty and frivolous exploits (and the not so questionable content for that matter?)? Do you really want them seeing your half naked pictures from that night? Or even worse, do you want them reading your account of that party on your best mate's wall, who your parents personally know and have already poked and sent a friend request to (aarrgh)?

Twitter sure is popular. There's been a recent spike in Twitter traffic of late, with some saying (namely Hitwise) it's over taken Digg in the popularity stakes. But does a rise in traffic mean a new bunch of devoted Twitterers? Probably and probably not. As one of the organisers of Twitterval tweeted recently - 'Only real Twitterers allowed'. 'Real' meaning you tweet on a regular basis, not once every blue moon. Or 'real' meaning you don't just set up an account just to follow people (which probably accounts for a chunk of this recent upsurge in traffic).

Narrating snippets of your day into 140 characters, takes a certain amount of dexterity, leaving the waffle for the verbal and giving us short, punchy, in a nutshell style tweets to prompt a few chuckles or shell shockers every now and then (or every hour, whatever).