back to article Twitter goes titsup

Microbabble platform Twitter is suffering a global outage due to an unknown service disruption. Twitter has been hobbled by a handful of issues today, with its web, mobile, and API service dropping offline from just after 8:00am this morning. The tiny bird claimed to have reported the outage by tweeting from their @support …

  1. Chika
    FAIL

    Alright, own up!

    Who broke it? Don't make me come over there?

    Of course this shows the weak point in the process given out by certain companies responsible for infrastructure that insist that they only give out details of "major disruptions" and that other folk need to go to Twitter.

    1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

      Re: Alright, own up!

      Who broke it? Don't make me come over there?

      Oh, I think I know why.

      Jeremy Clarkson must have been buried under tweets and hashtags after Chris Evans could not handle the very sympathetic Sabine Schmitz doing what she's good at: haring around the Nürburgring Ring track at speeds that are physically close to impossible (she's the one who came close to beating Jeremy Clarkson's Jaguar S type speed around it using nothing more than a Ford Transit van, just to give you some idea). Doing that with an Audi R8v10 seems to have been too much for Evans who lost his lunch (thankfully not in the car).

      If I were Jeremy, I'd be thinking of a different German word:

      Schadenfreude :)

      1. TeeCee Gold badge
        Happy

        Re: Alright, own up!

        Er, she beat Clarkson's time in the diesel Jag in a Transit van!

        The one who's really embarrassed must be the chap who'd booked the track day for his Porsche 911. You can clearly see him and the plates on the car as she drives around the outside of him on a corner in the Transit. I'll bet he still gets the piss taken to this day.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Alright, own up!

          "Er, she beat Clarkson's time in the diesel Jag in a Transit van!"

          No, she almost did. Clarkson got 9 minutes 59s in the Jag, she claimed she could do that in a van, but did it in 10m08s.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Alright, own up! -No, she almost did

            Still a somewhat impressive achievement, and a reminder that being a racing driver, regardless of gender, is a bit different from being even a very fast non-racing driver.

            1. James Hughes 1

              Re: Alright, own up! -No, she almost did

              Lots of people on other sites taking the piss out of Evans, but they need to remember, even professional co-drivers in Rally cars occasionally get car sick. Being in a car that is being thrown about by a good (or even bad) driver is quite the experience, and much much worse than driving it yourself, and I do speak from experience.

          2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

            Re: she almost did it

            9 seconds, that's close enough - given the odds (Jaguar vs Transit Van) I say WIN!

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: she almost did it

              "given the odds (Jaguar vs Transit Van)"

              Jaguar vs Transit Van with all extraneous trim/weight removed while slip-streaming a Dodge Viper.

              Subsequent groups have done slightly modified vans (no slip-stream) in the region of 9m30s.

    2. WalterAlter
      Meh

      Twitter Ennui

      Suicide note: "Can't...stop...Twittering...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Genius...

    The tiny bird claimed to have reported the outage by tweeting from their @support account on Twitter, which nobody was able to see due as Twitter was down.

    As good as phoning up your broadband provider when there's an outage and listening to the message, over and over and over, stating you can log the problem via their website

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. James Hughes 1

        Re: Genius...

        Me?

      2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Re: how many of us don't have a phone or tablet with data these days?

        Roughly 6.9 billion people. You're welcome.

  3. LesB

    I miss the Fail Whale

    Used to be a common sight, now seems to be extinct, poor thing

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: I miss the Fail Whale

      Pity it will not last, having Ark B offline should improve the overall humanity IQ by a few points. Now if we could have both F***book and Tw*tter offline for just a few days... Adding Linked in for good measure would be nice too.

      Not for any other reasons - I just want to observe the withdrawal symptoms. Popcorn please...

      1. Chika
        Mushroom

        Re: I miss the Fail Whale

        Mmmmust tweet.... must tweet... must tweet.... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGH!

        1. 's water music

          Re: I miss the Fail Whale

          Mmmmust tweet.... must tweet... must tweet.... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGH!

          Must... post... snark in social media thread. Protesting too much?

          <cue recursive thread meltdown>

          1. Chika

            Re: I miss the Fail Whale

            Again, the irony is lost within the cold, hard text world. :(

    2. Midnight

      Re: I miss the Fail Whale

      The Fail Whale was fired three years ago and hasn't found a new job since.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is like unwrapping a fresh roll of bin bags and not having anywhere to throw the wrapper.

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Keyboard not detected.

      Press F1 to continue.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "This is like unwrapping a fresh roll of bin bags and not having anywhere to throw the wrapper."

      Or buying a new pair of scissors that came trapped in one of those toughened plastic packs that nee scissors to cut them open.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Fihart

      Or like buying a wallet...

      ...and having no money left to put in it.

  5. cyke1

    wonder how many idiots called 911 over this?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Osama's alive?

      1. Anonymous Custard
        Trollface

        No, but I hear Gordon is...

  6. Graham Marsden
    Meh

    Umm...

    ... so did anyone here notice?

    1. Chika

      Re: Umm...

      http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3550/3444045862_434bbcaae9.jpg (NSFW)

    2. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

      Re: Umm...

      ... so did anyone here notice?

      Yes, but only because news sites considered this of enough importance to mention it.

      Given my volume of tweets and the attention I pay to Twitter it could have otherwise taken weeks before I'd notice. It's not exactly a massive part of my life :)

      1. DropBear
        Joke

        Re: Umm...

        Flintstone, huh...? Let me guess - the twitter app on your smartphone is an actual bird?

        1. Captain DaFt

          Re: Umm...

          Eh, it's a living.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Umm...

      Yes. We have our companies tweets on our Intranet (I think it is so at least someone reads them). Badly implemented, so when twitter had a Total Inability To Support Usual Performance, so did we.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Umm...

      Not really, twitter is a ghost town (using media metrics for measures of ghost towns), with less than half the number of active users that google+ has..

  7. breakfast Silver badge
    Trollface

    Slow news day ahead?

    Journalists across the nation horrified at the possibility they will actually have to do their jobs instead of lazily recycling celebrity tweets.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Slow news day ahead?

      Political journalists across London horrified at the possibility that there won't be any stupid tweets from drunken politicians, thus meaning they will have to pick up some actual gossip and try to get a comment on it.

    2. Darryl

      Re: Slow news day ahead?

      Well, it's a boon to TV news anchors.

      "This just in, Twitter is back up. Oh, wait, now it's down again."

  8. Charlie Clark Silver badge
    Mushroom

    PIty it won't be permanent!

    NFT

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To take a comment from the thread about Friends Reunited

    Twitter? you don't mean to tell me that they are still in Business?

    1. Efros

      Re: To take a comment from the thread about Friends Reunited

      In business? Yet to make a profit I believe, so maybe/maybe not. Depends on whether you have stock or not.

  10. Sir Barry

    OMG OMG, TWITTER IS DOWN AND SOMEBODY JUST SPOKE TO ME!

    WHAT DO I DO, HEEEELP!!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Just switch to WhatsApp and annoy some friends instead. No need to return to an upright position that puts you at risk of actual eye contact..

  11. TRT Silver badge

    8am outage...

    Breakfast consists of Shredded Tweet.

  12. TheProf
    Happy

    Nice

    Isn't it nice to read an article on ElReg (or any other news site for that matter) that isn't covered with quotes from some random people you've never heard of?

    (I'm assuming you've all heard of me on here.)

    1. Chika
      Coat

      Re: Nice

      Didn't you do those comic inserts wearing a lab coat in Vision On?

      1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Re: Nice

        "Grab your goggles, put your lab coat on, here he comes - Professor Proton!"

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nice

      They can't, twitters down.

  13. Silviu C.

    Today, worldwide productivity increases 100%.

    1. Kane
      Trollface

      "Today, worldwide productivity increases 100%."

      Except for around here, yes?

    2. Mage Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Increases 100%

      Facebook is still up...

      .

      .

      .

      .

      Sadly

  14. Winkypop Silver badge
    Trollface

    Twatted

    The beardy-types and the modern-women will be so upset.

    If only they could tell someone.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Twatted

      Those modern women with their short hair and their bicycles. All the fellows at the club agree that sort of thing simply cannot be allowed to stand!

    2. Mark 85
      Coat

      Re: Twatted

      On the bright side... no pictures of other people's breakfast. Oh wait... FB is still running...

  15. Chika
    Thumb Up

    Twit's up!

    Just managed to get in, though my first tweet of the day had to struggle through "internal server errors" before it finally went.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Twit's up!

      Who the hell cares?

      IRC has been up for several decades.

      1. James Hughes 1

        Re: Twit's up!

        WTF is IRC?

        (I do know, but the rest of the world doesn't, and also doesn't give a shit about IRC)

        1. Chika

          Re: Twit's up!

          I know what it was. What it seems to be these days is a file sharing forum inhabited by bots and afk's.

          Damn shame.

  16. TeeCee Gold badge
    Meh

    Twitter down?

    <Battery Sergeant-Major Williams>

    Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

    </BSM Williams>

  17. Sgt_Oddball
    Coffee/keyboard

    Wait...what?

    Our business twitter is working fine on my compy (did have the failbot all of this morning) but my colleague still has naught.

    Not that i'd generally notice.

    To be honest, I'd notice even less if Google+ went down...

    Escape, because we've escaped twitter if only for a morning..

  18. tempemeaty
    Paris Hilton

    I'm not to surprised

    As often as Twitter tweaks their web site, it's amazing this hasn't happened more often.

  19. timcroydon

    Tweetdeck too

    Looks like Tweetdeck is affected too. Get nothing but a 503 response.

  20. jake Silver badge

    That would explain why ...

    My neighbor just went into angst mode, claiming "The Internet is down!".

    He wanted me to fix it, pronto.

    I was more interested in allowing my sighthounds to pee & poop before bed.

    Six of one, half a dozen of the other ...

    1. sabroni Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: He wanted me to fix it, pronto.

      Hey, you built it! You should fix it!

      1. jake Silver badge

        @sabroni (was: Re: He wanted me to fix it, pronto.)

        ::tiredly::

        I have never stated that I single-handedly built TheInternet(whatever THAT means). However, I was an engineering student at Stanford and Berkeley in the mid '70s and '80s, and did contribute. As did many other people.

        Why do people like you insist on putting words in my mouth/keybr0ad? Inferiority complex?

    2. Robert Moore

      Re: That would explain why ...

      > I was more interested in allowing my sighthounds to pee & poop before bed.

      I am not the only one on here with a sighthound.(Ex-racing greyhound from Ireland.) I feel more and more at home. :)

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: That would explain why ...

        Show kennel. Whippits, Greyhounds and Wolfhounds. Inherited from my Grand Parents. We don't race, but we do attend lure coursing events, and of course between the dawgs & I, we WILL eventually eliminate all the fscking ground squirrels on the property. Hopefully. Those little bastards seem to procreate five or six times faster than rabbits!

  21. pete_witty

    still down 9:26 am No Twitter

  22. DropBear

    Well they better fix it _before_ the next SpaceX launch or we'll never find out how it went...

  23. Paul Shirley

    mostly working here

    Only thing I noticed was some (not all) photos were blank, tweets arrived between 8&9am, feels like a few less than normal since then but planning tomorrow nights drinking unaffected so far ;)

  24. Stoneshop
    Trollface

    Compressed?

    The Register has contacted Twitter for an explanation and will update this article if and when we receive a reply.

    Would it fit in 140 characters?

  25. Ian Knight

    Oh no not again

    Looks like it has gone down again, I can't even load the error page at the moment

    1. Chika

      Re: Oh no not again

      Got in through Tweetdeck though it doesn't allow me to tweet. Only certain folk can...

      Seems like a good enough excuse to switch it off.

  26. Downside

    as expected

    Twitter is back up so everyone's back on it rather than posting here. Thanksfully the Three data network has been tunred-off-then-on-again too, yay, much rejoicing in my iDevice.

  27. pewpie
    Happy

    Official word.

    It's clogged up with bile.

  28. Chika
    Trollface

    Twitter has failed us. What we need is CROW REVOLUTION!!!

  29. Joseph Haig

    Panic!

    Now how will I know if it starts snowing?

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They'll never get to 10,000 characters at this rate. Perhaps they should give the character counter the full two bytes because I don't think the 14 bit signed integer is working.

    1. Alistair
      Windows

      @AC

      " full two bytes because I don't think the 14 bit signed integer"

      I see you've been in this war for a while too.... Either that or read my other post...........

  31. thedroog

    Twatter Down

    Best place for it the pile of shite

  32. Bbbbit

    For those that have seen Das Boot...

    It is like the bit where they are in a massive storm so the Captain takes them underwater for a "few blessed hours of peace" and Lt Werner half-clambers onto his bunk and passes out.

    Well a bit like that; niche I know.

    (Is it back up yet? Not that I give a sh*t.)

  33. -v(o.o)v-

    ...to the IRC, of course.

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