August 12, 2011 - 13:16 AMT
MySpace a new victim of Anonymous?

MySpace appears to be the victim of a hacking this evening,.

CNET news reports that visitors to the social network are being 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.

A few minutes after MySpace's page was replaced with the message, "The service is unavailable," only to be replaced again with the original message.

MySpace representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment, CNET says. Some Twitter users suggested the site had been hacked, with at least 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.

Updated at 12 a.m. PT to reflect that this was apparently a MySpace outage and not a hacking.

News Corp. bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million as part of its purchase of Intermix. Then in June 2011, it sold MySpace to digital-media company Specific Media for a reported $35 million.