Twitter Down, social network suffers outage as users unable to access timelines
Twitter crashed for thousands of users early Wednesday, just days after owner Elon Musk axed hundreds of staff and soon after a cryptic threat from China.
For much of the morning, many users were able to get to the “Welcome to Twitter!” welcome page, but without their news feeds showing up.
Individual feeds were still accessible, but seemed with no fresh content. And while it appears possible to send fresh tweets, they do not show up on other users’ inaccessible timelines.
Reports started coming in of issues just before 4:50 am — with more than 4,000 by just after 5:30 am, according to Down Detector.
Many appeared to be back on the social media site just after 6 am, and by 7:30 am there were only a few hundred reports of problems.
It was unclear exactly how many users were affected, and Twitter’s own status analytics reported “All Systems Operational” even during the outage.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash, with Chief Twit Musk presumably unable to use his own $44 billion site to share updates.
The hashtag #TwitterDown started trending, with many users joking about their unexpected time off the site once they were back on.
“During the hour that Twitter was down, I was surprised to discover that I had a wife and two children,” one wag wrote.
It comes just days after the once-again world’s richest man laid off another 200 staff — bringing the site’s workforce down to under 2,000, a dramatic decrease from the 7,500 there when he took over last year.
Musk also got a cryptic warning from China’s state-run Global Times newspaper not to share theories about the origins of COVID, which the FBI and US Department of Energy now confirm is most likely a Wuhan lab leak.
Before the crash, Musk was up until at least 2am in Austin, Texas, testing a new microphone feature for chats on Twitter Spaces, cackling as he distorted his voice — and made bathroom noises and even loud farts.
His last official tweet was a high-brow joke at 1:25 am.
“What do you call an infinite gear ratio? All torque, no action.” he wrote.
Twitter crashed for thousands of users early Wednesday, just days after owner Elon Musk axed hundreds of staff and soon after a cryptic threat from China. For much of the morning, many users were able to get to the “Welcome to Twitter!” welcome page, but without their news feeds showing up. Individual feeds were still accessible, but seemed with no fresh content. And while it appears possible to send fresh tweets, they do not show up on other users’ inaccessible timelines. Most of the complaints came from users who were unable to access the site by…