BYE!

Guess there are still a few people who give a crap about MySpace, after all. TechCrunch reports that the site's few remaining users are not happy with the redesign, which cut off access to everyone's old, personalized pages in favor of some new music-sharing scheme.

Complaints are flying fast and furious in the forums: "A PLACE FOR FRIENDS" was  the objective. My page was like my Cyber home, it had a unique look and feel," writes one user. "It is UNCONSCIONABLE to completely wipeout your memberships archives with ZERO warning!! YOU have just signed your own 'cybersite' death warrants," warns another, very angry person.  "everything gone????? just becouse u felt like pulling the plug? INSANE." You know that last guy is serious because he included lots of question marks.

Sure, it's a blow to the nostalgia-prone and the cultural historians of the future.

But let's get real: Most people who maintained a long-abandoned MySpace page in their adolescence should be thanking God and also Justin Timberlake right now. Just be grateful that if you ever achieve any sort of notoriety, there'll be nowhere to check for your bathroom-mirror selfies and rants about how Mom is such a bitch because she wouldn't let me go to the Good Charlotte concert with Kathy, God, I can't wait until college.

With Xanga on its way out, too, soon all that will be left to embarrass you is... everything else you've ever done on the Internet.

Holla. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

No doubt you'll be shocked to learn that the U.S. has apparently been hacking China for years. No? [ABC News]

Edward Snowden's full of great ideas: "You have not lived until you've rolled over to post-coital Krispy Kremes. That's what being an American is all about. I recommend them." [Daily Mail]

MySpace is spending $20 million on an ad campaign for its relaunch, because somebody just cannot take a hint. [Ad Week]

Even if you're using a "hands-free device," electronic bells and whistles in your car are still big, fat distractions. [Computer World]

Human rights activists worry about the uptick in attempts by Southeast Asian governments to impose controls on Internet access. [Wall Street Journal]

Bloomberg's next Global Social Media Director (Getty Images)

Did you have a Friendster? Were you popular on Myspace for a time? Then you (and only you) might be qualified to be Bloomberg's new Global Social Media Director.

In a job listing first flagged by Reuters reporters Felix Salmon and Shane Ferro, Bloomberg details the qualifications required of their candidates for Global Social Media Director, the first of which is "6-9 years’ experience required in social media and digital marketing."

In other words, they want candidates who began using social media in 2004, when the dominant social media websites were Friendster and Myspace, which had launched only a year before. Facebook was still limited to Harvard students, and YouTube was just a Stanford wet dream.

According to the listing, Bloomberg's Global Social Media Director will report to the Global Head of Social Media, who we imagine has even more social media experience, such as best practices for using the <blink> tag on Geocities pages.

Ms. Ferro is qualified, having started using social media ten years ago.

"I think I started as a freshman in high school?" Ms. Ferro told Betabeat in a DM. "My best friend was like...'Are you on Myspace?'" But she doesn't think 6–9 years of social media experience should be a requirement. "Having been on social media for 10 years, I know that nothing matters (for professional purposes) before 2007–08," she said. "There was nothing but navel-gazey teenage angst before then, right?"

Those with experience in both navel-gazey teenage angst and professional digital marketing can apply for the position here.

Miss u (Photo: 1039 RXP)

Remember that Crazy Blind Date app from OKCupid that purports to set you up with someone who hopefully won't kill and/or maim you for a night on the town? Turns out it accidentally exposed users' email addresses and birthdays. Sucks for everyone who lied about their age! [Wall Street Journal]

Google is holding a developer event for Glass. If you paid that $1,500 to get a test pair of Glass, you're in for a treat. [AllThingsD]

California Rep. Zoe Lofgren has proposed a bill that she hopes will be called "Aaron's Law" aimed at modifying the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act which many say was abused in the Aaron Swartz case. [The Hill]

New MySpace seems kind of like it's just a big ad for Justin Timberlake's new song. [TechCrunch]

The awesome NASA mohawk guy is going to ride with a Mars Rover float in the Inaugural Parade, because America. [Wired]

(Photo: flickr.com/ky_olsen

Don't be alarmed, but it's very possible you wasted money on that smart TV. [PC Mag]

Companies might be reconsidering Amazon Web Services, after one outage too many. [Wall Street Journal]

Netflix is preparing to roll out new social features, like the ability to share what you've watched (if you want) through the company's Facebook app. So you'd better finish watching every available episode of "Say Yes to the Dress" on the double quick. [TPM]

Doesn't look like Poke is going to dethrone Snapchat juuust yet. [GigaOm]

Speaking of online video: is Hulu about to lose a lot of employees? [AllThingsD]

We hope you didn't bet any serious money on the new version of Myspace turning the old girl around. [The Verge]

lol ur poor (Photo: Twitter)

Tom Anderson, a.k.a. "MySpace Tom," is an American Internet icon responsible for creating what was once the world's most influential social network before it devolved into pages upon pages of sparkly animated GIFs and tExT tHaT LoOkS lIkE tHiS. That picture of him mugging in a white tee before a white board is seared into our collective subconscious, perhaps representative of a time and a place when MySpace didn't need Justin Timberlake to sell the concept.

Though he sold MySpace to News Corps. in 2005, Mr. Anderson is still the poster child for the early aughts' favorite Internet timesuck. And ya know what? He’s pretty damn sick of people ripping on his claim to fame.

When Mr. Anderson tweeted about Instagram's new terms of service, a snarky Twitter follower tried to one-up him, but Mr. Anderson would have none of that:

(Photo: Imgur)

Burn! The working class, amiright?

Mr. Anderson added that the offending Twitter user has subsequently deleted his account. "Does that mean I win?" he quipped.

Oh, and for the record, don't expect Mr. Anderson to swap out that iconic white board selfie any time soon. "If I used a new pic it would break the Internet," he tweeted. "my pic has been viewed more than than the mona lisa bitch." Can we get a half-day off from this guy?

Mr. Vener (Photo: Jasen Hudson)

It's hard to say where exactly MySpace went wrong. Once the favorite social networking platform of you and your little 9th grade friends too, it has become the quintessential target for Internet ire. One day you were pimping out your animated background and snapping selfies in your parents' bathroom, and the next you were denying you even had a MySpace account. It basically became the equivalent of admitting you use Hotmail.

But MySpace, sold for a paltry sum a little over a year ago, is planning to stage a massive comeback--and there's one dude who's helping to do that.

Wired reports that MySpace lead music editor and curator Scott Vener has been working hard to help rebrand the site's tired image. He was tapped for the gig by Justin Timberlake, who's a part owner in MySpace and who helped bring attention to the (actually pretty awesome) video released to outline the site's new look.

Writes Wired:

Even if you don’t know Vener’s name, you might know his work — he’s the guy who picked the music for Entourage, How to Make It in America and90210. Now, he’s the man picking the music for Myspace. As lead music editor and curator of the social networking site, he’s charged with bringing music and musicians back into the fold of what was once the world’s dominant social networking site.

“We all know this is expected to fail,” Vener said in an e-mail to Wired, in which he discussed Myspace’s latest makeover. “With those low expectations comes a lot of freedom. Cool is what happens when you get creative and have nothing to lose.”

MySpace is now touting itself as a place for creators to connect with their fans, so it makes sense that Mr. Vener is a major part of that push.

We don't envy Mr. Vener's job one bit, though. Aside from Marissa Mayer, he might just have the hardest gig in tech.

MySpace traffic from June 2007 to June 2011 (via Quantcast)

Myspace is preeeeeeeeety pumped about its relaunch (under its new parent company Specific Media) later this year. So pumped, in fact, that Al Dejewski, the company's new senior VP-global marketing, has extreme fitness on the brain.

In an interview in AdAge, Mr. Dejewski compared Myspace's eight-year life cycle "to that of a young male adult who found a way to express himself through music but decided to bulk up on things like classified ads and horoscopes along the way," says the paper.

Interesting. Tell us more.

"This young adult male needs to be put on a diet, we need to get it on P90X, clean its system and get back to its foundation. And we've found that foundation is music," Mr. Dejewski told Ad Age. "No other music destination online today can claim the breadth of partnership we have with the four major music labels in addition to the tens of millions of independent artists and the libraries of their songs."

With the new creative director Justin Timberlake and two branding agencies on tap, Mr. Dejewski thinks Myspace's relaunch as a music hub will put the site up against iTunes, Spotify, and Vevo. It's true that what was supposed to be a social network ended up being a way to listen to new bands for free. But we still can't shake the image of a balding guy in a leased Ferrari.

Will Murdoch join Myspace?

The full News. Corp board will meet this week to discuss the fallout from the News of the World "Phone Hacking" scandal and then, on Wednesday, deliver its end of year financial report which it hopes will shift attention and allow the company to move on.

The big news on the tech side is that News Corp. finally sold off the long suffering Myspace, which had been a perpetual eye sore on its quarterly results. The purchase price wasn't enough to move the needle, but it will stem the losses in the interactive division. The cable division and Fox in particular, are expected to deliver their typically stellar results.

News Corp is sitting on $12 billion in cash, much of which it had hoped to spend on the now defunct BSkyB deal. The company will probably heed its large investors wishes to buy back a large chunk of stock, but savvy start-ups could also grab a piece of the pie through a tactical M&A deal. Start pitching those biz dev types today!

The big question is whether Murdoch will remain his position as chairman of the company. Institutional investors in News Corp. are game to strip him of his title, hoping that his removal will allow the company's stock to bounce back from the losses it sustained during the scandal.