As of 1:36 this afternoon, Walmart’s online site is down, either due to “Scheduled Maintenance,” or “High Traffic Volume.” The site displayed different messages to us upon successive visits.

Several Digg commenters say Walmart experienced a similar outage last year.

Either Walmart has a crappy server setup…a relatively unlikely scenario… or they’re trying to drive foot traffic to their brick and mortar stores by thwarting online shoppers. — BEN POPKEN

UPDATE: Walmart’s site was back up by mid-afternoon. Walmart.com spokeswoman Amy Colella blamed a “higher than anticipated traffic surge.”

“Nonetheless, with the exception of Wal-Mart, online retailers were generally performing well,” said the AP.

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