The photo blitz lasted an hour or two on Monday afternoon, during which Bing's 91,000 Twitter followers were bombarded with links to photos taken at a Saturday Night Los Angeles Confidential magazine party that was sponsored by Bing.

"At the LA Confidential party presented by @Bing," Microsoft said in Twitter message after Twitter message.

The souvenir pictures show partygoers posing in front of a white background and are doctored to look like a Los Angeles Confidential magazine cover.

They weren't very popular on Twitter, where the reaction was instant and unforgiving. "" wrote one follower. "," wrote another.

Microsoft didn't seem to know exactly what happened, but a spokeswoman said Monday that the account was not hacked. "It was not our intention to flood the Twitter feed, we have remedied the situation and apologize for the inconvenience," she said via e-mail.