Twitter suffers global outages

For many people around the globe, Twitter was inaccessible today. The site suffered problems that affected its web and mobile faces, and it didn’t take long for the #twitterdown hashtag to start trending.

The problem was confirmed -- somehow -- on Twitter by the Twitter Support account, and the developer API status page showed that there were issues with no fewer than four APIs. On Monday, Twitter suffered a brief outage, but Tuesday's was rather longer.

Monday's issue lasted just ten minutes and was resolved without explanation, but today's problem is rather more long-lived. The infamous fail whale made an appearance as APIs suffered what has been described as "performance issues" leading to "service disruption". Both the Twitter Status page and the Twitter Support account displayed the same message:

Some users are currently experiencing problems accessing Twitter. We are aware of the issue and are working towards a resolution.

— Twitter Support (@Support) January 19, 2016

While Twitter seems to be back to normal for users in some parts of the world, the problems are ongoing in others. The cause of the outage is not yet known.

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