International

Twitter Down For Several Users As Elon Musk Sets Stage For Layoffs

Several users reported issues in accessing Twitter on Friday morning. The news came amid reports that Twitter is preparing to lay off several employees.

Advertisement

Twitter logo displayed on a smartphone
info_icon

Twitter on Friday morning suffered outage as several users reported they were not able to access the social media platform on their devices.

Issues with Twitter began to emerge in the early hours of Friday and rose significantly around 2:30 am, according to Down Detector which tracks internet outages. 

"User reports indicate problems at Twitter," says Down Detector on its website along with a graph of user's reports of problems.

After reaching an initial peak at around 3 am, the problems reported by users kept fluctuating until around 6 am when they began rising and reached the peak around 8:30 am. Users' reports of problems fell again but began to show upward trend again from 10:30 am. 

Advertisement

IANS reported that the outage mainly concerned computer-based usage of Twitter.

"Twitter suffered a brief outage for some Indian users and came back to life soon...Twitter on mobile was working fine but users on the desktop version had some troubles logging into the platform," reported IANS.

Down Detector reported that 93 per cent of problems reported concerned Twitter web, 6 per cent concerned mobile devices, and 1 per cent concerned server connection issues.

India Today reported that some users were getting the following message: Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.

"The Twitter website is down for some of us at India Today Tech as well. For some people, the website shows – 'Something went wrong, but don't fret — let's give it another shot'. It has been nearly an hour since the Twitter website is down for users," says the India Today story updated at 10:03 am.

Advertisement

In another Twitter-related news, Twitter is slated to have its first round of lay-offs within days of its takeover by tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Twitter said in an email to employees that their employment status —whether they are being retained or let go— will be communicated to them via email starting on Friday, reported CNBC.

"We recognise that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward," said the email, screenshots of which surfaced on the internet.

It's reported that employees will be notified on their official email IDs if they are retained and on their personal email IDs if they are let go.

Twitter currently has about 7,500 employees.

The internal communication to employees made public also said that staffers will not attend office until the lay off exercise is over and their office access remains suspended. 

"To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended. If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home," said the communication. 

Some employees have shared on Twitter that they have been remotely logged out of their company email and Slack accounts, indicating they are being let go, according to Tech Crunch.

Advertisement

In previous reports, it was mentioned that widespread lay offs at Twitter could hamper its day to day operations and cause outages. 

Advertisement