A fashion designer has sued wacky-mess rocker Courtney Love for libel on MySpace. Love's response? Going on a blabby Twitter rampage and accusing Lindsay Lohan of stealing drugs.

Rupert Murdoch's media empire continues its turmoil after the announcement of COO Peter Chernin's departure. The newest player: Former AOL CEO Jon Miller, who's widely expected to take the top digital job there.

The Satanic Myspace page of 16-year-old John Katehis, who confessed to murdering newsman George Weber, has already been deleted. We've salvaged quite a few of his photos. Here, the complete, creepy collection:

The 16-year-old who's confessed to killing radio newsman George Weber — identified as John Katehis by the New York Post — used MySpace to profess his love for sex, violence, knives and Satanism.

Paula Froelich's debut novel, Mercury in Retrograde, doesn't come out until June, but the Page Six gossip already has MySpace and Twitter accounts set up for two of the characters in the book, along with illustrations by Marisa Acocella Marchetto. And they're both a bit fiesty! One recent tweet from "society writer" Lena Lipppencrass who goes by "LpstickCarcrash" on Twitter: "Ran into Dori Cooperman on the street—she's glowing." That she is! [Twitter, MySpace]

Bad days for MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe: A tell-all book about the lowbrow social network's shady origins is hitting the shelves as a Wall Street analyst predicts layoffs. How long will he last?

In your blustery Wednesday media column: the newspaper industry burns, News Corp can't handle hardcore music, NPR needs more black people, and the NYT sells a jet:

Meet Officer Vaughan Ettienne, the bodybuilder who learned the hard way you shouldn't write like a thug online, or a jury might just suspect you of mistreating a suspect.

Amit Kapur, the 27-year-old No. 2 executive at MySpace, is leaving, according to a memo from MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe. It looks like he's planning a startup: He's taking two executives with him.

A tipster tells us Wendi Deng dropped by MySpace headquarters with a friend on Friday. What is Mrs. Rupert Murdoch up to at the News Corp.-owned social network?

Apple's got the iPhone. Google's got Android. Even Amazon has the Kindle. After flirting several times with the ooohs-and-aaaahs gadget business, Intel convened a brain trust last week to work on their own mobile phone.

How a conference dies: The savvy crowd stays away, while eager second-raters fill their seats. Google cofounder Sergey Brin is skipping Davos. Meanwhile, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe fought with a colleague to go amid layoffs.

What is it, precisely, that is so annoying about the on-off romance between MySpace-MTV fameball Tila Tequila and Courtenay Semel, the daughter of former Yahoo and Warner Bros. bossman Terry Semel?

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:

The celebrity-industrial complex will expand, must expand, can't help but expand until every site on the Web features gossipy famous-people headlines. The latest entrant: DailyFill, MySpace's slapdash copycat celebrity-news site.

"If you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor." [Michael Wolff]

After we went to all the trouble of offering Spitzer hooker Ashley Dupre seven—seven!—different career choices yesterday, what does she do? She goes and tells Diane Sawyer, "I want to go after my music and do what I love. And not lose track of who I am on the way. I'm trying to pursue my music. I'm still living for it. I'm not gonna give up my dream. I'm not going to change. I'm not going to let this change who I am. And what I love." All of those short declarative sentences do not change the fact that your song "All We Want" is just the sort of generic R&B bullshit blathering that has already largely destroyed our nation's airwaves. We say this as a friend! Regrettably, Ashley is listening to her other friends: her MySpace friends. Like Whitney Houston, and "Fin" from Williamsburg:

Facebook has made a bold bet on being the next Google. The problem is that it may have made the wrong bet. The Wall Street Journal has taken tardy notice of Facebook's "engagement ads," first launched in August. They are not an easy sell; they require advertisers to come up with some compelling "action" for Facebook users to take, which will then be shared with their friends, and thus spread virally through the social network. And yet the chief way Facebook hopes to sell these ads is through an automated sign-up process. Facebook has a direct-sales team, but its top management lacks experience in managing large sales teams. Which may explain why MySpace, which has built a large salesforce by recruiting heavily from Yahoo, has 15.9 percent of the display-ad market, while Facebook has a mere 1.1 percent. (Chart by WSJ/ComScore)

Want a MyPod? MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe hints that the social-networking site might sell MySpace-branded MP3 players to make its MySpace Music spinoff a more plausible competitor to Apple's iTunes. Last we checked, this plan did not work for Napster, either. [BetaNews]

Poor Jessica Vascellaro. The Wall Street Journal reporter will never be able to live down the video she and several Webhead friends recorded on a Cyprus vacation. The song-and-dance number was controversial as a sign of bubble-era excess — and as an indication that Vascellaro might be rather too close to the companies she covers. Last night, as Vascellaro partied at the MySpace Music party, the DJ put on "Don't Stop Believing" — the same Journey song which provided the soundtrack to their seaside frolics. Kara Swisher has video from the party:Click to view