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When Dan Brown writes a new book, he doesn’t need to advertise it – the book can advertise itself.

You’ve seen the millions of commuters all holding Dan Brown’s books up to their nose every morning. And you’ve seen packs of sweaty, clueless-looking Americans stumbling around Paris and Rome squawking “Ooh, The Da Vinci Code! Ooh, Angels & Demons!” in the belief that The Louvre was only built so that Tom Hanks could run around it in a funny wig.

But still, Dan Brown’s new book The Lost Symbol comes out soon, and this time he is advertising it. On FACEBOOK!

There’s no doubt that Dan Brown’s new book The Lost Symbol will be a massive success. This is because all his other books are massive successes. This is because Dan Brown understands that making idiots feel intelligent in a slightly patronising way is absurdly profitable.

Dan Brown has found his formula and it works – take a lead character with a bewilderingly awful haircut, have him run around a European city while looking quizzically at an old book, build everything up to a climax that doesn’t make any sense and then blame the Catholics for everything. Bingo. Another truckload of cash to Mr Brown.

And everyone’s confident that the formula works, because five million copies are going to be published in the first run alone. Whichever way you look at it, you’re not going to be able to escape it. People will be reading it on the bus. People will be talking about it on TV, bookshops – remembering the wave of excitement when Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows was released – will organise special midnight opening events where lonely people can dress up as a crap-haired detective or a burning pope or whatever.

But at least you can keep away from all the The Lost Symbol kerfuffle on the internet, right? It’s not like anyone’s going to suddenly ambush you about it on Facebook, right? WRONG! AP reports:

Publisher Doubleday announced Tuesday that Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” — his first novel since “The Da Vinci Code” — will be preceded by a summer-long procession of “codes, cryptic trivia, puzzles, secret history, maps, aphorisms” and other daily teasers on Facebook and Twitter.

Oh goody. We genuinely can’t wait for someone on Twitter called @Robert_Langdon to start following us so that he can bombard us with endless cryptic messages like “I need help decoding this anagram. It says: BUY THE NEW DAN BORWN BOOK” and “Does anyone know a good conditioner for shit hair that looks like it was carved out of a chunk of vinyl?” and “Hey, remember the time my mate turned out to be descended from Jesus? What an inexplicable coincidence that was.”

No, really. We can’t wait for that.

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9 - Six point-missing movie remakes – Cracked

8 - Speaking of which, there’s going to be a Fantastic Four remake. Yes, already – RT

7 - A new site that women will like and men will like secretly – Domesticsluttery

6 - Reasons we wished we lived in the past, number 32 - Image

5 - Facebook’s stupid redesign makes the news - Telegraph

4 - Bionic people: a list - Paste

3 - Please, someone buy us one of these - NYT

2 – Here, have some weird infomercials - Manofest

1 - The funnest city council in the whole world…

But that doesn’t mean that we want to see a Facebook movie ever. Ever ever ever ever ever. Which is a pain in the bum because Aaron Sorkin, the brain behind The West Wing and Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, is only going to jolly well write one, isn’t he?

Not to be outdone, MySpace has also decided to make a movie – except that’ll be made by Uwe Boll off his chops on cattle tranquiliser, trapped in a kaleidoscope factory and given a budget of 50p and a cast of nearly-naked women whose dialogue only consists of the line “HEY! Want to get LAID Tonite?” repeated every three seconds until blood starts to trickle out of your face.

So yes, as we were saying – we dawdle around on Facebook for hours at a time, but that doesn’t mean Facebook deserves to be turned into a film. We also had food poisoning fairly recently and spent hours hunched over a toilet vomiting up six days’ worth of food, but that doesn’t mean someone should make a film poking around in the still-warm contents of our upset stomach with a stick, does it? Does it?

No. But try telling that to Aaron Sorkin, the man who recently made a TV series about a comedy show that committed the dual crimes of a) not featuring any jokes and b) going all boggle-eyed at Sting like a soggy-knickered schoolgirl every chance it got.

Aaron Sorkin’s writing a film about Facebook, you see.

Why? God knows why. Presumably a cigar-twiddling executive at Sony saw his niece send all her friends a FunWall post of a monkey farting in a cat’s eye and decided that all kids everywhere would definitely watch a Facebook movie, perhaps while imagining the lucrative merchandising possibilities of Facebook action figures, Facebook lunchboxes and Facebook: The Educational Preteen Cartoon Series.

Either way, the only way that Aaron Sorkin could research this Facebook movie of his was to go onto Facebook and start a Facebook account of his own. The BBC can take it from here:

“I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I’ve started this page,” he wrote. “This is me,” he insisted. “I don’t know how I can prove that but feel free to test me.” The 47-year-old admitted he did not really understand Facebook, or “how I’m going to write the movie”, so was relying on fans to help him. “I honestly don’t know how this works, which is why I’m here,” Sorkin said.

At the moment the jist of the Facebook movie seems to be about the creation of Facebook rather than Facebook itself, which is great because it’s basically going to be There Will Be Blood except about a bunch of awkward geeks who we hate because they’re all far richcer than we’ll ever be.

So that’s it. All we have to do now is sit and wait for this Aaron Sorkin Facebook movie to be released so we can slag it off before we’ve even seen it and then make a hilarious joke about how we’re waiting for the sequels, which are rumoured to include:

*Facebook: Our Mutual Friend (Is That Weirdo From School Who Nobody Ever Spoke To)

*Facebook: Jeremy Has Thrown A Sheep At Robert LOL

*Facebook: The Empire Pokes Back

Our sides. Seriously.

Surely she’s one of those types that gets their profile banned for being far, far too whorish for the young audience of the site?

It would appear Paris has special dispensation, however, as she is reportedly ‘dating’ – or whatever the kids call it these days – the CEO of MySpace Chris DeWolfe, who has surely given her special privileges for her profile. More photos, space to upload more of her wonderful music (seeing as her pop career is something of a nonstop rollercoaster right now) or something like that, surely. It is shocking that Paris didn’t let MTV find her a new boyfriend, mind.

What makes the story all the more shocking is that neither Paris nor Chris have updated their profiles to show they are single, with each still involved in a relationship and a marriage (though separated), respectively. Guys – go to your profile, click on edit then change the information accordingly – come on, you shouldn’t be leading people astray like this.

At least if it were Facebook you could change it to ‘It’s Complicated’, which would suit perfectly.

Yes, in the world of celebrity it’s always good to keep a low profile if you’re sneaking about behind your other halves’ backs. So what better way to go about it than to go to some high-profile parties, be filmed and photographed together at them then let the evidence be uploaded to all websites in the world?

Hecklerspray thinks there may be a better way – there may be a number of better ways – but we can’t think right now. We’re too busy cruising MySpace for some honeys. Surely if you can get Paris Hilton through the site then you can also get a woman actually worth getting?

Though, to be honest, if Hilton does end up President of the US then she would at least have some point to her… decisions, decisions.

It would seem that Paris isn’t exactly pushing for the core demographic when it comes to the voting public, instead focusing her campaign trail on the numerous parties that DeWolfe has been hosting. While she may be able to schmooze her way to popularity at these events, a few hundred votes or so surely aren’t enough to grab her the presidency, are they? Though with voter apathy at its current levels, anything is possible.

On the other hand, this could be something of a power play by Chris DeWolfe. He has seen his MySpace empire lose its grasp on the world of social networking and may well want to re-assert himself and the site in a very public fashion.

By being the First Man of the US, he would surely have President Paris’ ear and be able to push for the XXVIII Amendment: ‘The right for Facebook to be banned and every American to have to have a MySpace account. Or they will be shot, thanks to the II Amendment’.

Stranger things have happened.

Needless to say, hecklerspray will be following this story to see if anything worthwhile comes of it. You never know what nasty comments a jilted lover could leave on MySpace, after all.

However, we were proven wrong when we were told that a couple can prove their love for each other by ‘creating a baby’. This literally knocked us back, throwing into disarray our previous notion that a child is created using flour, the tears of an orphan, vanilla extract, nail clippings and the sweat from a man/woman depending on what sex you wanted the child to be.

In days gone by, people would takes months to even kiss each other – never mind engage in any sexual goings on. Having a baby would only happen a good few years after marriage, under the eyes of God and surrounded by an approving society. However, we now live in a culture where a girl will flash her tits for half a pint of lager or for a couple of cold chips.

So just imagine our disgust when we found out our number one celebrity fan and all round grasper of swear words Lee Ryan has left his pregnant fiancée of eight months.

Ages ago, Lee Ryan called hecklerspray scribbler Chris Laverty a “cunt” after reading a story about pop-demigods Blue being mime artists on stage. A pop band not singing live? That’s like saying they don’t write their own songs. When will the lies stop?

We decided to stick by our Lee despite his misspelt messages to the hecklerspray Myspace page and sometimes our personal accounts. From the lows of walking out of Hell’s Kitchen and lamping a taxi driver, we’ve been there for our bruv. Granted, there haven’t been any highs for him yet like a Mercury Prize nomination, but we still have expectations of him.

It’s only recently come to our attention that Lee did indeed find love – hooray! We were just about to crack open some Superbrew to celebrate, but then we found out a few things. His girlfriend Samantha Miller didn’t meet him in a fancy restaurant or nightclub. No, she got her tits out and sent him the pictures through Myspace. Who says romance is dead? Not our Lee of course, who fell head over heels for Samantha. Likely because he didn’t have to pay 35p to see a pair of boobs in The Sun.

More than likely this story will be sold to a tacky women’s magazine, but a source told the Daily Star:

“She is distraught and doesn’t know what to do – it is horrible enough to be dumped any time, but with her pregnancy, and all her hopes they would build a future as a family, it has left her in tears.”

In the interests of fairness, a friend of the elephant man – possibly Laverty – said:

“They’ve only been dating a few months and we didn’t expect him to settle down any time soon.”

Samantha was a fan of Blue in her youth and was said to have pictures of Lee all over her room. These days she’s five months pregnant and all alone in the world. It looks like she may have to sell those much-loved wall coverings to afford clothing for the child now.

We believe this proves that Lee is not actually sexually attracted to humans, but actually elephants. No-one with any sort of morals would do such a thing to a lady who’s up the duff. Remember everyone; this is the bloke who thought 9/11 was a drop in the ocean compared to the plight of the elephants.

Reports that he has moulded his penis to resemble an elephant’s trunk are unconfirmed and we aren’t volunteering to find out. Maybe a fan from Myspace can confirm or deny things for us in a few months. Though, to be honest, everyone knows Facebook is where it’s at these days.

Because now Facebook is getting in on the free music revolution, by letting REM stream their new album Accelerate through Facebook application iLike a full week before it gets physically released.

The implications for this are huge – if the REM experiment works it might become normal for bands to use Facebook as pre-release tools, changing the face of music forever. Although, let's not forget that we're talking about an REM album that wasn't released in the early-to-mid nineties, so perhaps the only real implication involves millions of Facebook uses updating their status to 'underwhelmed.' 

For all the carping on about how the internet is killing the music industry, old acts that aren't very good any more have never had it so good. In the old days, once their commercial appeal had dried up, bands only had the choice of either buying a trout farm or joylessly performing to tatty backing tracks at Butlins.

But the internet has put an end to that. Now, even though they don't sell any records any more, old acts can cobble together some sort of hokey internet-based pricing system for selling albums and all of a sudden they're cutting edge again. Cliff Richard did it, The Charlatans are doing it and even Nine Inch Nails – the oldest, most pointless band around – are letting people download their self-indulgent instrumental wanks for free.

And now it's the turn of REM. For the last decade or so, REM have pretty much stuck rigidly to a set pattern of recording identical albums that nobody except for six readers of Q magazine really cares about again and again. But now it's time for REM to change and embrace the internet. The part of the internet where people still actually have to buy your records, admittedly. The Times reports:

R.E.M. have announced that they will debut their forthcoming album on the iLike internet application used on social networking site Facebook. The American band will release Accelerate as a stream available for sharing on March 24 – a week before the album hits shop shelves. They are the first major music act to debut a full album using the iLike application – a widget used widely on Facebook… [Michael Stipe said] "It was one of those ideas that was presented to us and it seemed like a good one so we ran for it."

To stream an album before its release is a brave move for REM to make, because if people hear it and decide that it's rubbish, they're just not going to buy it. So at least the band are confident that they've made a new album. Just not confident enough to release it normally without sellotaping it to a gimmicky headline-grabbing marketing strategy that involves propping it up next to something modern and popular to show how relevant REM still are.

But, still, if this is how REM wants to show that they're down with the kids, we'll happily take it – things could be so much worse. After all, we hear that second on REM's list was a concept album about High School Musical produced by Lethal Bizzle.

Of course, it's Q magazine we feel most sorry for here. Now that REM has discovered the internet, who will it put on its covers every single effing month? Eric Clapton? Say it isn't so.

Read more:

R.E.M. to debut new album on Facebook application – Times 

Know who’s a 785th place loser, too? Facebook originator Mark Zuckerberg, that’s who. What a slacker. He’s probably all boo-hoo about being 785th place. What’s that? The thing for which he placed 785th was the list of richest people in the world?  

Well, then that’s not too shabby out of billions of people, now is it. 

People say that money can’t buy happiness, but if we were named one of the richest people in the world by Forbes magazine right now, we’d be happier than a drunk Care Bear on speed right now. But, we’re not on the list. Neither are you, for that matter, but someone who is on the list making you feel even more pathetic and unsuccessful is 23-year-old Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.  

Yeah, you read that right. 23 years old. In fact, he’s apparently the youngest person on the list who didn’t inherit money from their dead, geezerly sugar daddy (Anna Nicole Smith we’re looking down at you. Well, we have to look down because you’re dead in a grave) or anyone else. Mark Zuckerberg is a self-made man. We hate our lives.  

So, basically, Mark Zuckerberg has become a billionaire making a website that allows you throw cyber cows and chickens at people and join groups like ‘Group to stop all of these applications for all these groups’ group. Well, he’s actually made $1.5 billion dollars if you want to split hairs. Seriously. $1.5 billion dollars. For throwing cows. Man, do we feel the fool for not starting that farm animal-chucking farm website we thought about. By Mark Zuckerberg’s example, it’d probably be a lot more successful than our real-life farm animal-chucking farm.  

Wow, we just can’t get over that Mark Zuckerberg is only 23 years old. If you’re anything like we were at that age – and we know you are because we scour your Facebook profiles like neurotic ex-girlfriends looking for evidence of that new hag you’re dating in the manner for which the site was intended– you were aimlessly staring off into space wondering what to do with a college degree in Gregorian Masters of Chant, trying to figure out where in the world that smell is coming from.    

At least we can take solace in the fact that Bill Gates dropped from the number one spot where he's been for 13 years to the number three spot. Friggin' imbecile.  

Read more:  

Facebook Founder Youngest Billionaire On The Planet - People

That is, social networking is fine, but by and large people don't talk about Kylie Minogue very much. Happily, though, Kylie Minogue has remedied this by creating a Facebook-style social network site that's all Kylie Minogue all the time. KylieKonnect is the place where Kylie Minogue fans can register their details, keep in closer contact with Kylie than ever before and share their passion for all things Kylie with all the other Kylie fans in the world. Needless to say, KylieKonnect is probably the gayest little website the world has ever seen.

Kylie Minogue has beaten cancer for a long time now, and she's sufficiently better to release a new single and album this month. That means, finally, that we can stop calling her 'Brave Kylie' and start calling her 'Mediocre Comeback Single Kylie' instead. But watching a middle-aged woman stumbling around on top of a piano isn't how you get the kids to like you any more – no, you need the internet for that now.

And that's why some genius has decided to plunge Kylie Minogue head-first into the world of social networking with the launch of KylieKonnect (see that? They spelt 'connect' with a 'K'! It must be FROM THE FUTURE!). KylieKonnect is Kylie Minogue's slightly egomaniacal attempt to out-do MySpace and Facebook by offering fans the chance to keep their own blogs, upload photos and communicate with other users, so long as you only discuss Kylie Minogue and nothing else unless you want a soldier to come round your house and smash up your computer while humming The Locomotion to punish your insolence.

Anyway, the people behind KylieKonnect have come to the surprising conclusion that KylieKonnect is actually quite brilliant – like the woman in charge of the company that designed it, Julia McNally, who said:

"The whole thing is set up so that Kylie can update her blog and have a closer connection with fans."

Now, we're buggered if we're going to actually sign up to KylieKonnect to tell you what it's like – there's only so far we'll go for you people – but even without any of that we've been able to read the blog that Kylie Minogue probably pays someone to write for her and watch the KylieKonnect introductory video where Kylie Minogue pronounces the words 'social networking' like she's trying to translate an ancient alien language that she's never heard of before. And, to be fair, that was probably enough.

But, hey, KylieKonnect is social networking! And social networking is all about the people who use it, so maybe the Kylie fans will liven things up a bit, starting all sorts of discussions like "What's going on with Kylie Minogue's face?" "I think Kylie's new single is rubbisher than you do", "Why are people letting Kylie Minogue act in the new Doctor Who? Haven't they ever seen Street Fighter?" and "Kylie or Dannii – who gives a shit, frankly".

Despite our cynicism, though, there's every chance that KylieKonnect will catch on and spawn hundreds of imitators. Personally, we can't for RazorlightKonnect to get going, because it's thought that'll be the social networking site that most accurately captures the feeling of sitting in the desert all alone with nobody to talk to, wondering what went so very wrong with your life.