Sites like Myspace and Facebook, which are technically called "social networking" sites but are better known as "Lisa is...OMG are you watching The Hills right now? Craziness" ego-projection mechanisms for creating alternate realities, are suffering just like everyone else during this recession. Not traffic-wise; humans' desire to keep the outside world appraised of their moment-to-moment "status" only continues to increase. But money-wise, things are not looking quite so wildly engrossing:

Advertisers will pay $1.2 billion to place ads on sites such as Facebook and MySpace, compared with a previous forecast of $1.4 billion in May and $1.6 billion at the start of the year.

This is due to the decline in bullshit advertising tactics that are not proven to work (a category that includes advertising on Facebook and Myspace). But hey,Tumblr is only worth $15 million and it's at least as annoying as Myspace. So there's always hope. [NYP]