By Ashleigh Johnson

Daily Titan Copy Editor

It’s a big year for Facebook. The popular social networking site turned 6 years old this year, and went under the knife for yet another face lift (or rather, Facebook-lift! Haha! I’m a shell of a person!)

According to a recent MSNBC article, the redesigned Facebook layout was designed to “streamline navigation and make games and apps stand out more.”

In other news, guess which social networking Web site didn’t get a makeover? That’s right – Myspace.

Also, there’s this little gem: “The Crips, Bloods, Florencia 13, MS-13 and other gangs have long used MySpace to display potentially incriminating photos and videos of people holding guns and making hand gestures. They also post messages about rivals.”

The above quote comes from another MSNBC article about how the use of Facebook and Twitter has risen among gang members. However, “Gang use of Twitter and Facebook still lags behind use of the much-older MySpace, which remains gang members’ online venue of choice.”

Let’s let that sink in.

Now, I’ll admit that I am a self-proclaimed Facebook addict – Add me! My self esteem is directly proportional to the amount of Facebook friends I have! But there was a time, a simpler, more innocent time, when I was hooked on Myspace because Facebook was, leik unkewl k? LOL!

For the purposes of this column, I decided to log into the sparkly-backgrounded horror for the first time in who-knows-how-long, brushing off the dust on my abandoned Myspace blog before I finally put my account out of my misery.

After poking around Myspace for about five minutes, I reached a startling conclusion: I really don’t give a crap about a majority of what goes on in people’s personal lives.

And that’s what, in my own opinion anyway, attracts people to the site (and, for that matter, Twitter – and before you Twitter users form an angry mob to go key my car, allow me to just say that I have a Twitter account as well, and I am aware that some people use Twitter for reasons outside of announcing their latest deposit to ye olde porcelain throne) instead of Facebook in the first place: they’re attention whores.

Granted, I know plenty of people who abuse the status feature on Facebook as well, sending updates to all their friends whenever they’ve so much as eaten a sandwich or successfully managed not to get lost in the corner of a room. But there’s something about Facebook that just seems more mature than its peers.

Look, put down this column for a moment and look at someone’s Myspace profile. Almost anyone will do.

OK, did you do it? Good.

Now, compare what you just saw to the stereotypical image of a gangster. You know, the image that’s constantly being crammed down our throats by the media.

Commence laughing now.

Look, I’m not a business person, but I do know that it’s hard to take anyone seriously after seeing that their online presence consists of a Hello Kitty background and a YouTube animated music video of characters from Dragonball Z fighting to the tune of a Linkin Park song (I will not be judged!). You can’t menace much of anyone with a lengthy blog post about how OMG random you are.

C’mon, gang members. Is this what you want to be associated with? The antics of 15-year-old girls? It’s not as if Myspace is an exclusive Web site that only a select few people know about.

Here’s some advice, free of charge. If you want to use a social networking site to organize criminal activities and don’t want to get caught, use Friendster – no one goes on there anymore.

Question: Does Friendster even still exist? I would check but, you know, it’s Friendster.

And now, I’m off to cancel my Myspace account “because a couple of guys who were up to no good started making trouble in my neighborhood. I got in one little fight and my mom got scared and said ‘you’re moving in with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air.’”

You’re welcome.