According to site outage tracker Downdetector, Twitter looked to be experiencing a severe outage early on Wednesday. Thousands of users reported outages beginning at 5:15 a.m. ET.
By 7 a.m. ET, some users of the social media platform appeared to have access again, according to reports on Downdetector.
On Wednesday morning, the hashtag #TwitterDown was also popular.
Some users claimed to have seen a “Welcome to Twitter” message, which is what new Twitter users typically receive when they first log on.
The notification stated, “Welcome to Twitter!” and was screenshotted. “The finest spot to see what’s going on in the globe is here. Pick some subjects and individuals to follow right away.”
Others had trouble refreshing their Twitter feeds, and they encountered the following message: “Currently, tweets are not loading. Try once more.”
New users appeared to be able to publish fresh tweets, though. According to The Independent, users could also visit the individual account pages of select persons to view their tweets.
What led to the disruption?
The reason why the social media platform’s timeline was not operating properly on Wednesday morning was not immediately apparent.
Twitter job losses
The outage on Wednesday follows news of Twitter’s most recent wave of layoffs. The New York Times claimed Saturday night that Twitter has laid off 200 workers, or nearly 10% of the remaining workforce.
In the months since Elon Musk bought Twitter in October, thousands of staff have lost their jobs. After the layoffs on Tuesday, the company’s staff would have decreased from 7,500 before Musk took control to under 2,000.
If the most recent job losses were related to the outage on Wednesday, it was not clear.
