Twitter is back online after suffering a major outage on Wednesday, December 20, Reuters reported.
For several hours, thousands of users globally were unable to access the popular social media platform or even use its key features.
Since billionaire Elon Musk took over Twitter as CEO in late October, this is the social media app's first apparent widespread service disruption.
Downdetector Records More Than 10,000 Affected Users From the US
During the peak of the disruption, Downdetector, a website that tracks outages through a range of sources, including user reports, recorded more than 10,000 affected users from the US.
Meanwhile, the site also recorded about 2,500 affected users from Japan and about 2,500 from the UK.
Based on users' reports, the outage began just before 7 PM Eastern time. It reached its peak at around 7:44 PM.
According to Engadget, the message "something went wrong, but don't fret - it's not your fault" was encountered by the users who tried to access the site.
Users complained that they experienced technical issues in accessing the social network through a web browser. Meanwhile, only a smaller number of users said the incident also affected the mobile app.
On Wednesday, internet watchdog Netblocks said that Twitter is experiencing an international outage which is affecting the mobile app and features, including notifications.
Netblocks also added that the outage is not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.
By Wednesday evening, reports of users experiencing Twitter outages fell sharply. There are some users who even commented later on that the service had returned to normal.
When asked for a comment, Twitter did not immediately respond. In addition, the social media platform's status page showed that all systems were operational.
Meanwhile, during the outage, some users posted about Twitter being broken. But Musk just responded that he wasn't experiencing any trouble loading the social media app.
Read Also: Facebook Down Today: Full Details of Global Outage, Best Reactions on Twitter
#TwitterDown Trends on the Social Media Platform
As users shared updates and memes about the service disruption on Twitter, the hashtag TwitterDown became trending on the social media platform.
The outage happened two months after Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter. The billionaire's acquisition of the social media platform has been marked by chaos and controversy.
First, he fired former CEO Parag Agrawal together with other top executives. Next, he made himself CEO, doing most of the decision-making for the company.
Last month, shortly after his takeover of the social media platform, he laid off about half of Twitter's workforce.
He pushed more employees to quit when he gave workers an ultimatum to work hardcore or exit the company. With this, hundreds of employees quit, including engineers who are responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages.
In addition, major companies paused advertising on the platform causing Twitter's advertising revenue to suffer.
Just recently, the billionaire reinstated previously banned accounts on the platform and banned some journalists.
In February and July, before Musk's takeover, thousands of Twitter users were also hit by a global outage.
This year, other big technology companies were hit by outages. In July, Canada's biggest telecom operator Rogers Telecommunications experienced a nearly 19-hour service outage.
Related Article: TikTok Down! Twitter Filled With Funny Rants
