Heatwave topples MySpace

A record-breaking heatwave which crippled power systems throughout California shut down MySpace.com for nearly 12 hours, starting on Sunday night.

The popular social-networking site, which recently topped Yahoo! Mail as the most-visited website in the US, was disabled entirely as of 18:40(PT) on Sunday.

The homepage was replaced by a placeholder with a message from MySpace founder Tom Anderson, who said the site was dealing with a power outage in its data centre. He cited the time as 18:40(PT) and estimated MySpace would "hopefully" be back up within the hour. "Wanna place a bet?" Anderson quipped in the note.

As of about 6:00(PT) on Monday, the site was back up.

Representatives for MySpace, which is owned by News Corp, could not be reached for comment early on Monday.

The outage at the West Hollywood, California-based MySpace was just one consequence of the power failures that swept through California after a week of record-breaking temperatures. The Los Angeles Times estimates 175,000 homes and businesses lost electricity over the weekend in the Los Angeles area. Power outages were also reported in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego.

In order to pacify MySpace users, the "site down" notice was accompanied by a Flash game of Pac-Man.

Caroline McCarthy writes for CNET News.com