Social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter, suffered an outage on Thursday, as users complained that they couldn’t access posts. However, services were back and posts became visible after over an hour.
According to Bloomberg, this was the biggest outage since Tesla's chief executive officer Elon Musk bought X last year. At around 11 a.m., more than 94,000 users reported issues with the site, Downdetector, which tracks website and service interruptions, reported. The number of user-reported issues reduced to about 7,000 an hour later.
Some users panicked and thought their account was either suspended or hacked and others had time to make memes about it. While the reason for the outage is still unknown, around 70% of the reports faced issues with X’s app, while another 20% faced issues on its website, Bloomberg explained in its report. Some users received a "Welcome to X!" message, while X Pro users got a message that said "Waiting for posts."
"Did Elon just shut down Twitter for maintenance or something?" a post from an account by the name of David Homes (@DavidConquest0) posted on X. Users also took to the Threads app to discuss the issues. Although X was back up, it didn't take long for #TwitterDown to trend on the site.
Since Musk's $44 billion acquisition, the platform has been in the news for layoffs, including many engineers responsible for fixing and preventing service outages, a Reuters report said. Earlier this year, Musk changed the platform's name from Twitter to X and dropped the iconic blue bird from the logo. In a press statement, X's chief executive officer Linda Yaccarino commented on the transformation: “X will be the platform that can deliver, well….everything.”
Moreover, Musk’s introduction of paid features with Twitter Blue has left many users frustrated. They now have to pay a fee to keep the blue tick, a mark of verifications on the website, and also have to join a paid subscription to access a few features. Amid these disruptions, some users have abandoned the site for Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads by Instagram app.
While the recent outage didn’t last long for many, it came as a reminder of the disruptions that users have faced since recent changes. There has been no official word yet from the company about the issue.
