Tila Tequila might be one of the 50 most important people on the web, but it looks like her attempt to use MySpace as a stepping-stone to world domination has flopped. Her single “I Love U” has sold only 13,000 copies in its first week of release, sales figures that put Tila in the embarrassing company of people like Kevin Federline and Paris Hilton. Even worse, that’s a pitifully small percentage of the network of 1.7 million people she built through her MySpace page. Admittedly, this isn’t really a tightly controlled experiment in MySpace marketing. Tila has an awesome amount of drive and determination, but she comes up a little short on qualities like taste and talent. And “I Love U” is just a terrible song. On the plus side, Tila looks pretty good without her clothes. Which is probably why the video for “I Love U” (produced exclusively for downloading to cell phones, another innovation) is the #1 music video download at iTunes. Although I’m guessing most people watch it with the sound off.

So Tila deserves some recognition for trying to build a career in her own way, and using techniques no one else has tried. Maybe someone with the same genius for self-promotion and some actual talent can try the same thing. Then I’ll bet this intertube thingie will really take off.