This week, blogging maven Darren Rowse threw a Love-In of sorts, intended to inspire us to get acquainted with hundreds, even thousands, of new Twitters, Plurkers, Stumblers, etc. If you need some new social contacts, you can plow through this list of Twitterers, these Diggers and Stumblers, and, to top it off, a smaller group of Plurkers.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can Google social networking to get up to speed.

Who knew what could happen at a 21st century Love-In? The event caused (not completely unpredictably):

1. Twitter to break
2. Darren to get banned from Stumbleupon (to be fair, he was reinstated within hours)
3. Some Twitterers to report new followers from the, uh, sex industry
4. A text message sent to my phone from someone who I don’t know (sorry, but if your screen name is “MILF”-anything, I am not going to text you back.)

So. Social Networking doesn’t spread STD’s, but you might run into a few problems when you open your profile up to the entire world this way. I recommend that you doublecheck your profile and privacy settings before you start inviting new friends into your life.

Loosely Related to this are:

From Bulletin Boards to Brightkite: How we stay in touch
Loopt, Brightkite Invites: I’m Confused!?
Tapping the Power of LinkedIn