What I did on my MySpace summer vacation
If you weren't already aware of how big a role MySpace plays in the life of the American teen, this weekend's outage could give you a pretty good clue.
The social-networking site favored by just about everyone of school age these days was offline for a good number of prime posting hours, a lapse the company blamed on a heat wave in California. Now that MySpace is back up and running, there are about, oh, a bajillion blog entries that go something like this:
"What a freakin' satrday nite, DUUUUDE. Coudnt tell ya till now cause, like, there was just this freakin' PAC-MAN game where myspace is sposed to B, so i hadda like wriet this in word-freakin'-pad and then just waaaaaaiiittttt."
Other, somewhat more worldly observations on the brief respite from MySpace's seemingly ceaseless march to world domination wondered if, well, world domination really is possible for a company with a penchant for poor programming and apparently no backup disk array.
Blog community response:"I was losing my mind all weekend because MySpace was down! WTF!!! I know Tom has to do some maintenance on occasion... but that was way too long for me. I was starting to suffer withdrawl symptoms. I better go seek some professional help."
--MySpace user Smoosh
"But seriously, it is hard to believe that a service this large could just have one data center. Have they not heard of redundancy? I am pretty sure there is more to the story."
--GigaOm
"It's pretty significant when such a massive site goes down for an extended period of time - can you imagine what would happen if Google, or even Yahoo, went offline for hours at a time? (In fact, I remember the outcry in May 2005 when Google suffered a DNS error, resulting in speculation that it had been hacked). With MySpace, however, it's almost expected: users regularly see errors and the code is notoriously poor."
--Mashable!
"In a related story, the available bandwidth on campuses around the world has suddenly freed up."
--Diersing on Slashdot
"You know whats funny, i actually have found myself more on LJ when myspace was down. The majority of my friends posted as well. I think we should combine our powers and bring back LJ."
--LiveJournal user Nick
Jonathan Skillings is managing editor of CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. He's been with CNET since 2000, after a decade in tech journalism at the IDG News Service, PC Week, and an AS/400 magazine. He's also been a soldier and a schoolteacher. E-mail Jon. 
