MySpace is sick, and its Slingshot Labs spinoff looks like the first appendage of the social network to be amputated. We're told Rupert Murdoch's social media lab is finally dead.

A federal appeals court ruled you can't be convicted of bank robbery based on your MySpace profile, even when your username is "Trigga" and has images of falling $100 bills and you holding a handgun. Make it rain freedom, baby.

Seven Muslims were arrested Tuesday for trying to kill yet another Muhammad-doodling European cartoonist. Among them was Colleen LaRose, a blond-haired green-eyed suburbanite who met her co-conspirators on YouTube and online forums, under the name JihadJane.

Chris DeWolfe was indeed prepping his first acquisition: the MySpace co-creator bought gaming platform MindJolt.

After asking for information on Chris DeWolfe's rumored impending purchase of an unidentified gaming platform, we've heard from multiple tipsters claiming well-capitalized Playdom is in play. Less clear is who would buy: DeWolfe or MySpace, the social network he co-created.

A well-placed little birdie tells us MySpace co-creator and former CEO Chris DeWolfe will close on a deal to buy a "social gaming platform play" as early as tomorrow. Any idea what that might be?

The struggle for MySpace's future pitted East against West and North against South. Silicon Valley lost; Los Angeles and New York won. And all fired CEO Owen Van Natta could do was smile, shrug and crack open some cold ones.

• More layoffs at the New York Times may be on the way. Uh oh. [Wrap]
• NBC was planning to lose $250 mil. on the Olympics before the games even started. Now it's worried about low ratings/injured athletes, too. [LAT, NYP]
• More bad news for NBC: A poll finds that 69 percent of the people who used to watch Jay Leno have no plans to follow him back to The Tonight Show. [TVG]
• Two-in-one magazine/catalog Lucky has a new publisher. [WWD]
• Movies: The next Twilight installment will consist of two separate movies (everyone gets to pay twice!); Brittany Murphy's final film will hit theaters this summer; and Valentine's Day is expected to top the weekend box office.
• Related: Julia Roberts makes a six-minute appearance in Valentine's Day. That means she was paid about $500,000/minute for her services. [NYM]
• MySpace has clearly seen better times. (Like 2005.) [NYT, LAT, ATD]
• TV: The Ellen DeGeneres Show is staying on NBC, not going to ABC; evil empire Wal-Mart is planning to produce "family-friendly" television programming; and Sarah Palin's fave show, American Chopper, has been canceled, gosh darnit.

Internet superhunk and MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta quit right as he was on the cusp of becoming one of our generation's great social networking anti-heroes. He's leaving MySpace just 10 months after taking the job. Update: He was fired.

We hear News Corporation is winding down MySpace spinoff Slingshot Labs, a vestige of the media conglomerate's efforts to retain MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe. But the labs are hatching one last diabolical plot, on behalf of the Wall Street Journal.

Tila Tequila recently tweeted, "I HAVE NO FRIENDS!" But once, she did. An ex-boyfriend tells Gawker about the gap between Tila's "gangbanger" youth and famewhoring present: She was an alcohol-intolerant straight-edger with a split personality and unyielding ambition.

When Tila Tequila first popped onto the scene, she was the harmless, if ugly, face of fame's grim seduction. In the wake of "fiancée" Casey Johnson's death, she now represents everything wrong with our modern era.

Meeting that special someone on the World Wide Web just got .00001% less skeevy! Attorney General Andrew Cuomo reports that as part of a new state law enacted last year, some 3,500 sex offenders have been booted off of Facebook and MySpace, including 659 people who live in New York City. [NBC]

Alyssa Bustamante's MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube profiles are eerie in that "teen who engages in self-injurious behavior and bullshits about being tough" way. Except, when she lists "killing people" as a hobby? Police say that part was true.

Just as the public was learning that a huge chunk of Zynga's social gaming revenue came from scammy "quizzes" and "special offers," Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capitalists rewarded the company with $15 million. Hey, that's just how VC's roll.

Mark Pincus recently cut off the scamsters who supply his company with revenue. But before he bowed to controversy, the Facebook games merchant was more cavalier about corporate morality, even griping about his "bullshit" Harvard ethics class and idiot classmates.

Facebook and MySpace might finally pay the price for the big social gaming scandal: At least one law firm is investigating whether to launch a class action suit on behalf of duped users.

Just like Murdoch to go and ruin everything for everyone. Just when the studios had a great excuse with this recession thing to slash salaries and fire everyone in sight, along comes Rupert singing "Happy Days are Here Again."

It's hard to imagine much of a future for MySpace. Which is probably why it took a science fiction author to do so: Bruce Sterling says the flagging social network is an ideal shantytown for the nihilistic unemployed. Compelling!

Silicon Valley pundits like to talk about social media as a potential geyser of cash. What they leave out is that one of the only ways social networks like Facebook, MySpace have done that is joining league with online scammers.