Creative Capital got ahold of the December 2007 ComScore numbers for the top social networks in the U.S. — and they are, on the whole, not good. Engagement — average minutes spent on the site per visitor — is down for MySpace and Microsoft's Live Spaces, but up for almost all the other sites. Unique visitor growth is ominously low for MySpace and, in the last three months, LinkedIn. Hit the jump to see the numbers for yourself.

MySpace will launch its third-party developer platform on February 5, according to reports. And, because copying Facebook is about more than just following its major initiatives nine months later, the News Corp. social network today announced it would install almost Zuckerberg-aged 26-year old Amit Kapur as MySpace's new COO. But will Scoble find him as charming?

Of late MySpace seems in the throes of a quarterlife crisis (if there even is such a thing): MySpace celebrity, MySpace China, MySpace Sex Offender. But News Corps' owner and MySpace godhead Rupert Murdoch isn't done with the changes yet. As per a soft glow Times piece on Rupples, MySpace and its two-headed founder Chris DeWolfe/Tom Anderson, "users will soon be able to tailor their profile for subsets of friends, "so my colleagues will see a much different page than my college buddies," Mr. DeWolfe said." Which means! It'll be easier to a) be in the closet, b) play hooky from work because if one can tailor which friends display based on who is looking at the page there is not reason one can't tailor all other aspects as well or c) both a) and b) like that poor bastard on Facebook who got fired after his boss looked on his Facebook page and saw him in a faerie costume when he said he was home sick. [NYT]

OK, so Ask.com is no longer Ask Jeeves, and you've never heard of Cracked.com. And really, the Internet isn't that much like a bad college house party at all. But still, parts of the humorous short "The Internet Party," from which we briefly excerpt above, ring true. Like the perky, plucky "Google," who's played by a much less pretty but equally nerdy version of Marissa Mayer.

Yesterday, we reported that MySpace continues to beat Facebook soundly in traffic. But some, including Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget, reject the U.S. numbers we cited from Hitwise, saying worldwide traffic indicates "Facebook is coming up behind MySpace like a Ferrari about to blow past a bus." And how could we ignore such a simile? It's totally awesome, dude! So here's a chart comparing worldwide traffic for Facebook and MySpace, from ComScore.

Can anyone explain this to me? No one said a word when I revealed personal details from the MySpace profile of Megan Ellison, the bisexual, hard-drinking daughter of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a month ago. Yet we're fussed over Emily Brill, Steve Brill's daughter, simply because the juicy bits about her came off of Facebook. In Silicon Valley and Manhattan, admitting to a MySpace page is shameful. A Facebook profile? De rigueur. MySpace continues to dominate social networking, soundly beating Facebook in traffic. Yet Facebook still holds a special place in the hearts of the media and tech elite. Why?

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg may be getting all the money and media attention lately, but News Corp.'s MySpace still dominates when it comes to traffic. The site commands more than 70 percent of visits to social networks, according to this latest chart from Hitwise. Still, its share declined 8 percent in the last year. Which might explain why News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch was rumored to be poking around runner-up social network Bebo recently. Oh, and by the looks of things, maybe Barry Diller should have acquired MyYearbook for IAC back when he reportedly expressed interest.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch recently paid a visit to social network Bebo, according to Bebo employee Emma Carlsgaard, who posted an update to her Bebo profile about the sighting. What's Rupe doing visiting Bebo? A recent rumor suggests acquisition talks.

Will someone please think of the children? One could see Helen Lovejoy, the hysterical reverend's wife on The Simpsons, taking up this cause: Eliminating sexual predators on MySpace. Six state attorneys general have announced, with MySpace, a "joint statement" on making social networks safer for children. The principles are lofty; the actions promised, few. Most amount to technical upgrades in MySpace's privacy needed to keep the site competitive with Facebook.

The New Yorker's lengthy, depressing story on the MySpace prank that became a tragic suicide is up. If you're looking for a bright spot to a story of adults driving a depressed 13-year-old girl to suicide, it might be author Lauren Collins' description of how that whole MySpace thing works: "MySpace has a pliant grammar, and its users manipulate lowercase and capital letters for visual effect. 'Z's trump 's's, so that 'Miss Honey Love' becomes 'Mz.Hon3y Luv.' A boy named Shane writes his name '$h@NE,' in the pasteup style of a ransom note." Little old ladies from Dubuque are presumably thankful for the brief. (MySpace would like you to know that they're holding a press conference at 11 today about "security" with "Hemanshu Nigam, Chief Security Officer, MySpace and Fox Interactive Media and others.") [New Yorker]

MySpace has launched MySpace Celebrity, the celeb arm of the social-networking site. It's very...purple. The channel intends to empower previously disenfranchised celebs to "communicate directly with fans and control their voice." MySpace founder Tom says, "It's a natural extension for us to now offer them an aggregated channel where they can be in control of their own image." Hey, isn't that what they pay other people to do for them? And what about content? Oh, there will be content. Along with an exclusive news partnership with People.com, "Mathew (sic) McConaughey has provided MySpace Celebrity with an exclusive Q&A," among other things. [MySpace Celebrity]

Wednesday readers were shocked — shocked — to see Julia Allison talk about her life on the very site that through lurid coverage had transformed the columnist-pundit from someone no one knows about to someone Gawker readers know about. She's our symbol of the loathsome self-promoter, apparently because no one in New York realizes that her exhibitionist habits are perfectly normal.

MTV will tape a second season of "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila," their dating show in which the archetypical MySpace whore pretends to be bisexual and eventually "chooses" a suitor to unceremoniously dump shortly after the reunion show tapes. Whether you consider this a huge step forward for mass cultural acceptance of alternative lifestyles or are not in fact currently receiving a paycheck from MTV Networks, it's exciting news. [HuffPo]

Why did venture capitalist Ross Levinsohn's prediction that 2008 would be all about widgets seem so tired and predictable? Because it was. "If 2006 was all about social networks, user-generated content and YouTube, then it's a fair bet that 2007 will be about further personalizing life online," Newsweek wrote a year ago. Instead, 2007 turned out to be all about social networks, user-generated content, and YouTube. A shining example of how even the most obvious predictions are wrong.

Miracle on Bedford Ave [MySpace]

Blithe spirit Courtney Love thinks/hopes she has found a great place in a neighborhood called the West Village, Curbed notes—she spilled that on her Crazy MySpace!

Doris Lessing, the new Nobel laureate and 88-year-old author used her acceptance speech to disparage the impact of the Internet on our culture. The Internet, "blogging and blugging," Lessing said in her speech, "has seduced a whole generation into its inanities." Got a problem with this take? Let Lessing know on her MySpace page. You won't be the first, of course. As the Times pointed out, since the Guardian published Lessing's speech on December 8, her MySpace friends have gone from 125 to 362 at last count. Perhaps they're curious about "blugging." Is that anything like "krunking"?

There have been 13 ten-minute episodes so far, and here's what you've missed: our girl Dylan is a considerably less-endearing, blander Angela Chase in her twenties who works at "Women's Attitude" magazine and doesn't know what to do with her life. Then she starts blogging because she's a "writer," often addressing her webcam directly between bouts of pacing her bedroom.

Almost as bad as the user-generated video flooding the Web is the professionally generated stuff. Newspapers are thrusting nebbishy, ill-spoken print journalists in front of the camera. And why? Not because readers are eager to watch this stuff. It's because advertisers are falling over themselves to pay for it. According to numbers gathered by WebVideoReport, the Wall Street Journal charges a $90 CPM, or cost per thousand views, for the 15 second prerolls which play before its Web videos. On the other end of the spectrum, MySpace asks a $25 CPM. Here's a rundown of the rest.

Jonathan Miller, the man who was ungracefully booted as AOL CEO, and Ross Levinsohn, the former Fox Interactive Media chief who was never quite as in charge of MySpace as he would have liked, will form a new group at VC firm ComVentures, SAI reports. They're callng it Velocity Interactive Group. The pair plan to invest $20 million to $30 million in digital media startups in 2008 and already, they plan to close as many four deals in February. Wait, doesn't this sound familiar?