Has Twitter been hacked, or is it just broken again?

I know I write this a lot, but something is seriously wrong with the micro-messaging service Twitter right now. Either the site was hacked or it is plain broken. [Update: Not a hacking, see update at the bottom.]

The service went down for an unplanned outage about 45 minutes ago, and when it came back up I noticed updates in my Twitter stream from users I don’t follow. Okay, not a huge deal, this has happened in the past. The big problem is that my status updates have apparently been hijacked as well.

I’m sending messages to people I don’t know saying things I never said.

It’s too early to tell if this is an actual hacking or if something just ran afoul when Twitter brought the service back up. We have an email into Twitter to find out more. I’ll update if I hear back.

Twitter also put up its site redesign (apparently) a bit early today before pulling it down. Despite the great strides being made in harpooning the Fail Whale (fixing the service), it’s important to remember that things are still very much a work in progress.

Update: And the service is back down. I would guess it was a database issue and they are working on it right now.

Update 2: Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey has gotten back to us to say that it was not a hacking but rather some inconsistencies bringing a database out of maintenance. They are working on fixing the issue right now.

You can find me on Twitter here along with fellow VentureBeat writers Eric Eldon, Dean Takahashi, Anthony Ha, Chris Morrison and Dan Kaplan. Oh, and we have a VentureBeat account (for our posts) as well.