John McCain's MySpace pages have disappeared. His most popular profile -- the profile we've been linking to for our MySpace charts -- has apparently been deleted.

A search on MySpace yields another profile that is set to private (you can't see any posts or the number of friends), and two other less popular profiles are also deleted.

What happened? Did the McCain campaign do a search-and-destroy mission on anything unofficial? Are they working with MySpace to root out imposters? Is this the beginning of a seriously top-down approach to the web? Or are they gearing up to build one big, robust, popular McCain spot on MySpace?

In the meantime, you'll see that McCain is no longer listed in our MySpace graphs; he'll return when/if his MySpace profile returns.

UPDATE: According to Christian Ferry, McCain's National eCampaign Director, MySpace inadvertently deleted all pro-McCain MySpace pages. The following is a letter he sent out to McCain's supporters on MySpace:

Over the last couple of weeks, the eCampaign at John McCain 2008 has been working to get a new website launched and begin engaging in the social networks. When I joined MySpace, I was proud to see the strong grassroots efforts people like you were making on behalf of Senator McCain and his campaign for President. I joined many of those groups with excitement.

In the last few days, we at the campaign began a discussion with MySpace about creating an official profile for Senator McCain. In the course of that conversation, a member of my team miscommunicated the campaign’s plans to MySpace, leading to the removal of all the pro-McCain grassroots pages created by supporters like you. Following the example of Senator McCain and in the interests of “straight talk,” I wanted to you to know exactly what transpired. When this miscommunication came to my attention, I immediately began working with MySpace to resurrect those sites, taking the issue to the highest levels of the company. Unfortunately, that effort was not successful. When content is deleted at MySpace it cannot be recreated.

I am extremely disappointed and sorry that this has happened. It is not only unfair to supporters like you who have worked so hard on Senator McCain’s behalf, it is a disservice to the campaign as we now have no forums in which to reach all those supporters you had worked to assemble.

I would like you to know that we will soon be launching an official John McCain profile at MySpace. I hope you will consider joining that group and trying to help recreate the strong presence of John McCain supporters in MySpace. I would also be glad to see you re-start your McCain group. If there is anything I can do to assist that effort, please let me know and I would be happy to personally help.

Please accept my sincere apologies once again. I wish there was something that could be done to change what has happened, but all I can ask is your help in moving forward and rebuilding. I hope we’ll be working closely together as the campaign progresses.

Sincerely,

Christian Ferry

National eCampaign Director

John McCain 2008