Update: MySpace Back Online After OutageUpdate: MySpace Back Online After Outage

Social networking site and teen favorite MySpace was offline for several hours Sunday, a U.K.-based Internet measuring firm said Monday. MySpace blamed the outage on California blackouts and failed backup generators.

According to Netcraft, MySpace was completely out of action for approximately 90 minutes Sunday starting at 6:40 p.m. PDT, with intermittent failures continuing throughout the night and into Monday morning. Other media reports put the outage as long as 12 hours.

With the site down, only a terse placeholder remained:

"hey everyone! there's been a power outage in our data center. we're in the process of fixing it right now, so sit tight. hopefully we'll be back online within the hour. its 6:40pm PST now. wanna place a bet? -Tom"

Tom Anderson is the co-founder of MySpace, the social site which was purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. last year for $580 million. Earlier this month, Web metrics vendor Hitwise ranked MySpace as the world's #1 domain based on page visits.

MySpace operates two data centers, said Netcraft: one in El Segundo, Calif., the second in Tempe, Ariz. MySpace hinted that the El Segundo center went offline. "Due to the record breaking heat in Los Angeles over the weekend, the area where MySpace's servers are stored had massive power outages and the backup generators failed," a spokesperson said Monday in an e-mailed statement to TechWeb. "With power resumed, the network is now up and running."

Southern California was hit with a sting of blackouts and brownouts over the weekend due to overwhelming demand as record-breaking temperatures scorched the area.