The running tech industry joke that is the continued existence of early stage social networking site MySpace just turned into even more of a joke. Once valued at $12 billion, the forgotten MySpace does still exist. But in a story that will surprise no one familiar with the online advertising sector that calls itself “ad tech”, a large part of the site has been shut down after the publication of a BuzzFeed News investigative report that found hundreds of millions of pageviews that were bot-generated and not human web traffic.

It’s not the MySpace home page that’s been shut down, and you’re free to try and log in to your old account if you remember your 2004-era password. Instead, a video page called trendingvideos.myspace.com had been banished to 404 status. Buzzfeed’s report comes on the heels of their investigative piece from last week on the millions of fraudulent ad views racked up on “zombie websites” in the online ad industry.

“Once on the [trendingvideos.myspace.com] page, this traffic triggered automatic redirects and page refreshes that generated massive amounts of video ad impressions without any human involvement,” writes BuzzFeed News’ Craig Silverman. “It’s similar to how the 'zombie websites' generated ad revenue, and represents a new form of ad fraud that researchers say can rack up impressions quickly and under the radar.”

This particular BuzzFeed report found that MySpace’s trending videos page received 9.7 million visits and more than 450 million pageviews between May and September, pretty much all of it fraudulent. (In ad tech lingo, the “visits” are like an individual person visiting the web page, wheres the page views are that person’s clicks.) But these weren’t people, and the bot scheme used on MySpace and a series of local news websites owned by GateHouse Media defrauded big-name advertisers like Coca-Cola, Verizon, State Farm, and other recognized brands.

MySpace may be passe, but they’re up to date on the popular, modern-day ‘we’re just a platform’ defense. “Myspace did not agree to, participate in or condone any ad fraud activity,” said VP of marketing and communications for Viant, the Time, Inc. subsidiary that now owns MySpace. The company claims the pages were operated by a partner.

This MySpace mini-scandal is symptomatic of the new prevalence of video advertising online. You know those god-awful autoplay video ads on some websites? Advertisers and website owners love them, and the video ad format has spawned a “pivot to video” movement where websites in a rush to substitute video content for text. (This is why you see more videos on Facebook these days.) While video ads bring in much higher rates and brands think the videos “engage” consumers more, videos also engage more fake bot traffic. It's a funny laugher that MySpace got nailed by video ad bot fraud, but it's not unreasonable to expect more well-known and currently lucrative websites to have the exact same scandal in the future.

Related: Twitter Details 'Industry-Leading' Changes To Increase Transparency In Political Advertising On Its Platform

According to a study done by the Nielsen Company, Facebook and Twitter users are wealthier and than their MySpace counterparts living on the other side of the railroad tracks. Computer World notes, "The survey, which studied the top seven social networking sites, showed that Facebook users generally have an 'upscale profile,'" going on to point out, "Nielsen also noted that people who are more affluent than the other two-thirds of the population are 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the the lower third. And conversely, those in the bottom third of the financial chart are 37% more likely to use MySpace than those in the top third."

But while MySpace flounders in the affluent area, they're more than makeup by having younger users. A July '09 report done by iStrategyLabs shows says that "[t][he number of 55-and-older Facebook users showed staggering growth -- 513.7% -- in the last six months." Twitter has also seen similar growth within the of-a-certain-age sect.

[Valleywag, via Computer World]

Richard Alden Samuel McCroskey III of Castro Valley, the aspiring GANGSTA URBAN HIP-HOP RAP artist known as "Syko Sam" who allegedly killed four people in a small Virginia town (including his wildly naive girlfriend), bludgeoned his victims to death. Why? Because ""Jesus told [Syko Sam] to do it."

The bodies -- who were found over the weekend in a small town 50 miles west of Richmond, Virginia -- have been identified as Mark Niederbrock, a Presbyterian pastor, "Longwood University professor Debra Kelley, 53; Emma Niederbrock, 16, the daughter of Kelley and Mark Niederbrock; and Melanie Wells, 18, of Inwood, W.Va."

According to CBS 5/AP, Syko Sam was a "meek and kind person," one who crooned about "killing, maiming and mutilating" his fellow human beings. He presumably met Emma Niederbrock via MySpace, who had professed her love to him on the social networking site days before being beaten to death.

Check out his MySpace page here.

Wall Street Journal Senior Technology Editor Julia Angwin recently took an investigative look at the back-stories of MySpace founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, who prior to founding the social networking and glitter-gif bohemoth dabbled in porn, hacking, spam and spyware before stumbling on their mega-million-dollar meal ticket. The book is called Stealing Myspace and you can find it here or at an independent bookseller in your neighborhood.

SFist pulled Julia aside for a few questions:

SFist: How did MySpace cannibalize, or in your eyes improve upon, what Friendster created in terms of social networking in the early aughts?

Julia Angwin: MySpace noticed that Friendster was deleting accounts of "Fakesters" -- or people who were not who they claimed to be. MySpace saw the Fakesters as an opportunity and welcomed them onto its site. The freedom of MySpace has proved extremely popular - there are dozens of people pretending to be Britney Spears or Rupert Murdoch on the site at any given time. Of course, there have also been many stoires of people who have donned the MySpace mask of anonymity to ill effect.

It's interesting to note that Facebook has returned to the old Friendster model. It seems that people want both kinds of online venues - places to be anonymous, such as MySpace, and places to be their real selves, such as Facebook.

Luring us in with "just the kind of quirky San Francisco event that SFist readers would be interested in," a PR company sent us word today of a zany pre-Valentine's Day activity that's happening right this very second! It seems that a woman -- a woman who looks like she has no trouble finding a date whatsoever, God bless her -- is looking for love. Check it:

[Today] at the bright and early hour of 8am. Karen will initiate her quest by describing her Mr. Right to a Fisherman’s Wharf caricature artist, who will sketch an amorous wanted poster to share with her web and mobile followers. Internet Yentas will then be invited to suggest their best San Francisco love matches for Karen. The story will be broadcast via mobile phones to a worldwide audience using mobile social network, Zannel, as she sets out to find her mystery man. This way office workers can follow the story throughout the day. Viewers can follow her via mobile and Web on Zannel as well as via zannel widgets and applications on Facebook, Myspace, and the Courdarounds.com Blog...I'd be happy to provide you with more information, quotes, interviews or photos if you are interested.

Basically, Karen is a part of something larger. Much larger. The selling of pants. Wheels within wheels, my friends.

Anyway, according to Karen's profile, she's very much into "writing, cooking, travel, reading, dining out, running, Cordarounds, so-bad-it's-good reality TV, not camping, Star Trek conventions. Well, everything except the last one. HA." We're guessing she likes to call Quest, too, for all the hottest local singles.

Save for the tagging still remaining on Obscura Digital's door--leave them be, racialists!--the Neo-Nazi public art has all but disappeared. Sigh, we hardly knew ye.

The culprit of this week's spray paint melee was possibly uncovered and hotly debated by our fantastic sleuth readers. While we won't point any fingers as to who decorated Stillman Street with eye-popping Neo-Nazi flair, and the Vacaville-based MySpace page supposedly harboring the young hate monger's identity has since been set "private," we invite you to read all about it here. It full of speculative fun and finger pointing!

Our sources tell us that authorities (scary, intimidating, bugging-your-phone-and-reading-your-emails type of authorities) are on the case now, and we couldn't be happier. We don't like others moving in on our hate-spreading turf. Anyway, thanks, SFPD and SFist readers. You all, in a word, rock.

Although we can hardly see our computer screen through the hurricane of tears pouring from our eyes, we present to you the following poem of pain for Tatiana the tiger, penned by SFist poet laureate Ginadee62 in response to "Tatiana the Tiger's Official MySpace Memorial Page." This reader easily wins the award for Comment of the Week.

Read it. And weep.

Beautiful and majestic Tatiana, what have they done to you...the creatures, said to be the most civilized on the planet.
You longed to run, longed to roam, they lust to gawk and confer.
Your gold and black fur glistened in the blazing sun, you panted and could not figure out why it all seemed so strange to you.
You were so young when the creatures brought you here.
Memories and flashbacks, confusing to you.
Nature's beauty and unlimited miles of freedom you did know.
Now you are here and all you did was leap.
Yet you leaped too far, leaped too long. You found yourself amongst the creatures, the creatures who ran about, shouting in fear.
Flashbacks again, confusing to you.

What's more, the page has already garnered some choice testimonials:

• "THIS TIGER IS 100% innocent. PEOPLE SUCK!!!" -- +AVENGING ANGEL+
• "You were my favorite tiger. =( R.I.P." -- Kenna
• "Prayers & Blessings" -- Nicole & Blakie (Congenital Heart Defect Survivor)
• "HOW COME WHEN A HUMAN IS FOUND KILLING A ANIMAL, WHY ISN'T HE SHOT TO DEATH???? . . . AND FOR THE SCUM THAT ACTUALLY OPENED FIRE ON HER........ONE WORD..........KARMA!!!!!" -- Amy :)

We assume most of you MySpacers out there would love to chime in with your own personal testimonials. Visit the Official R.I.P. Tatiana Site™ here to pay your respects.

Today is your last chance to enter the contest by submitting a comment with your guess of the date and time the Cosco Busan will eventually sail through the uprights of the Golden Gate Bridge. Choose wisely.

In related news, Admiral Thad W. Allen, Commandant United States Coast Guard, (check out his MySpace - -- did he really put this up?) gave testimony today about how to handle petroleum spills from ships that are not oil tankers.

These so-called non-tank vessels include container ships such as the Busan, which only spilled about 2.7% of its total capacity of bunker fuel.

If the Busan had just been topped off for a big trip and somehow ruptured all its tanks, the worst case would be 2.2 million gallons spilled instead of 58,000. An unlikely scenario for the Bay Area, but you could say we got off lucky as only two of the Busan's "gas tanks" got punctured last month.

Read all about it here in glorious PDF.