Shortly after laying off approximately 200 additional employees, including hardcore Elon Musk loyalists, Twitter reportedly faced a major outage with users unable to view their timeline this morning.
The Verge reports that Twitter experienced an outage early this morning as users reported that the “Following” and “For You” timelines were unavailable. Although users could still access the site and send tweets, the outage annoyed many users who rely on Twitter as their primary source of news and communication.
Elon Musk’s Halloween costume (Taylor Hill /Getty)
Users from the U.S., UK, and other countries began reporting outages on Twitter around 5:00 a.m. ET, according to DownDetector, a website that tracks website outages. However, the issues were mostly resolved and feeds were loading again by 7:45 a.m. ET.
Twitter Support has yet to issue a statement regarding the cause of the outage, leaving many users frustrated and questioning the reliability of the platform. The outage coincides with reports of numerous layoffs and other problems since Elon Musk took control of the business.
Despite the disruption the outage caused, some areas of the website were unaffected. Users could still read and reply to their notifications or send tweets. It’s interesting to note that the outage didn’t seem to have any impact at all on Tweetdeck, a third-party Twitter client.
Breitbart News recently reported that Twitter conducted yet another round of unexpected layoffs as the company’s revenue continues to plunge. The company reportedly laid off around 200 employees on Saturday across multiple departments. The layoffs also reportedly include “hardcore Musk loyalist” according to Zoë Schiffer of Platformer.
Schiffer noted that among the layoffs is Esther Crawford, the chief executive of Twitter Payments, who tweeted in early November that she was sleeping at the Twitter offices to meet deadlines, stating: “When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork.”
Although it is currently unknown if the layoffs are related to the outage, Twitter does not have a public relations department, so users will need to wait until the business releases a statement.
Read more at the Verge here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan