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Can we play Snopes for a second and defuse a hoax that illustrates the thinking capacity of the average MySpace user? A skeptical reader sent in a message that's being passed around MySpace:

Tom sent a message today, he wants to let everyone know his plans for November. There will be 2 types of MySpace accounts; Basic Users, and Power Users.

It will be free for people to sign up as Basic Users, but you will only be able to add Power Users as friends and have a basic page.

Power Users will be charged 9.95 per month, but they will be able to fully customize their page and chat with whomever they like. They can add Basic Users, OR Power Users as friends.

Heres the thing. Tom is going to give out Power User accounts if you copy and paste this into a new bulletin. His plan is to keep the active users around to help sell the Power User accounts. Make sure you have this Buletin posted before October 31st or you will be defaulted to just a Basic User and lose all the people on your friends list.

Thanks from Tom and myself

The rumor is, of course, false. MySpace knows the pay-to-play model would never keep its vast user base. More obviously, the site would never announce such a major policy change through a bulletin. This is a classic self-propagating hoax — call it a meme, call it a worm, just don't buy into it.

But most of you already knew that.

Below, the reader's message to Valleywag.

Dear Valleywag, I recently got a message from a friend on myspace about how they are going to start charging for the use of myspace (I have put the context of the message at the bottom of the page, please read it before you go any further). First of all I think this is crap. I'm sure they make plenty of money off of the annoying ads already. What I'm actually writing to you about is an article that I saw on your site. I've been searching all morning but I cant find it. The article discusses how myspace was not actually created by "tom" but rather a marketing group. I was hoping to ad a link to this article at the bottom of the message and send it out so that everyone can see what myspace is all about. Thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing from you. Steve-Oh!

Steve-Oh, you're looking for MySpace: The Business of Spam 2.0, a Valleywag feature by contributor Trent Lapinski.