Many users of Twitter around the world reported yesterday and early today that they were unable to access the microblogging site. Based on news reports and comments on sites like the digital service interruption tracker Downdetector, Twitter’s content was unavailable via the Web and mobile devices.
Over the past 24 hours, the company has posted two tweets via the Twitter Support account acknowledging problems with the service. It said the issue that was reported yesterday had been resolved, and added it was “working towards a resolution” of problems reported earlier today.
A spokesperson for Twitter told us this morning that the company will provide further updates on its developer status blog and its Twitter Support page.
Problems on the Web, iOS, Android
Even though yesterday’s issues had been fixed, Twitter’s service again began experiencing problems starting at 3:20 a.m. Eastern Standard Time today, according to Downdetector. The number of reports it was receiving reached a peak of 2,550 at around 7:30 a.m., and has been steadily decreasing since then.
Nearly half of the users (46 percent) complained about problems accessing Twitter via its Web site. The remaining users noted problems using Twitter’s iPad app (26 percent) and its Android app (26 percent).
More than 1,500 users posted comments on Downdetector regarding the latest Twitter outage, reporting problems with access everywhere from Russia, the Philippines and Japan to France, the U.S. and Pakistan. Several speculated that the service interruptions were caused by hacking, but there hasn’t been any information to support that suspicion.
Issue Underscores Ongoing Troubles
By 11:15 a.m. today, Twitter’s developer site for tracking performance and availability reported that service APIs were all performing normally. The APIs for users’ home timelines and for searching tweets appear to have been the hardest hit during the outage, with average uptimes of just over 85 percent over the past 24 hours.
Launched in 2006, Twitter became known in its early years for frequent sightings of the “fail whale,” a cartoon whale icon that appeared in lieu of tweets when its systems were stressed or overloaded. The company has since retired the whale, and instead now posts an image of a broken robot to inform users that “something is technically wrong.”
This latest outage once again brings Twitter’s ongoing challenges into the spotlight. Unlike rival social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram, Twitter has struggled to achieve significant organic growth in its base, which currently numbers some 320 million monthly active users, compared to Facebook’s more than 1.5 billion monthly active users.
