Visitors to the social network were greeted by a largely blank page topped with the browser title bar that read "All is wrong :(" where the MySpace name would normally appear. In the upper left of the normally vibrant page was the message: "We messed up our code so bad that even puppies and kittens may be in danger. Please turn back ...now." It was followed up with the message, "* Have your pet spayed or neutered" in the lower right.
MySpace representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some Twitter users suggested the site had been hacked, with at least one wondering whether the former social-networking high-flyer might have fallen victim to Anonymous. Members of the hactivist group recently vowed to take down the social-networking giant Facebook in November, but there is some suggestion that the group's members are not unified in this goal. Regardless, MySpace's name has not recently been named as a target for hacking.
But the former social-networking sensation has fallen on hard times lately, losing more and more ground to Facebook until it finally underwent a massive redesign that left it focusing on pop culture media-sharing for young users rather than attempting to be a universally appealing social network.
But that failed to assuage executives at News Corp., which after a very public expression of its dissatisfaction with the site's foundering performance, sold MySpace in June to digital-media company Specific Media for a reported $35 million.
News Corp. bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million as part of its purchase of Intermix.
Updated at 12 a.m. PT to reflect that this was apparently a MySpace outage and not a hacking.