LONDON (AP) -- Twitter says the issue that caused problems for users today has been resolved.
It isn't saying what the issue was.
For more than an hour today, users in many parts of the world reported outages and sluggishness.
Visitors to the micro-blogging site were greeted with a half-formed message saying that "Twitter is currently down." The fields where a reason for the outage and a deadline for restoring service were apparently meant to go were filled with computer code.
The problems affected parts of the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.
Some users were able to post updates through their phones or third-party applications. Tweets about the Olympic torch making its way through central London poured in, but slowly.
While the site was affected, many self-proclaimed "Twitter refugees" posted complaints about Twitter on Facebook.
The breakdown came only hours before the Olympics are expected to bring an unprecedented surge of activity by sports fans on Twitter and other social networking sites.
It was the second time in just over a month that the site has been hit by problems.
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LONDON (AP) -- People around the world briefly experienced problems accessing Twitter on Thursday, a day before the 2012 Olympic Games are expected to cause a spike in use of the micro-blogging site.
About three hours after the San Francisco-based company first acknowledged the problem by saying its engineers were "currently working to resolve the issue," Twitter said in a statement that the "site issue" had been resolved.
It did not go into further detail on what caused the glitch -- the second time in just over a month that the site has been hit by problems.
Visitors to the site on Thursday had been greeted with a half-formed message saying that "Twitter is currently down." The fields where a reason for the outage and a deadline for restoring service were apparently meant to go were filled with computer code.
Sluggishness or outages were reported for more than an hour in countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Some users were able to post updates through their phones or third-party applications. Tweets about the Olympic torch, which is wending its way through central London, still poured in, albeit far more slowly than earlier in the day.
Mike Lizun of Swedish performance monitoring company Apica said the outage appeared at 11:23 a.m. EDT (1523 GMT). He said Twitter was "completely down" for about 40 minutes before briefly recovering and becoming unavailable again at roughly 12:15 p.m. EDT (1615 GMT).
While the site was affected, many self-proclaimed "Twitter refugees" had flooded Facebook with complaints about Twitter. As usual following outages, "WhileTwitterWasDown" was one of the most-talked about topics on Twitter in the United States. Users cracked jokes about their regained productivity as a result of the downtime -- or going outside to get some sunshine.
Twitter said in March that it has more than 140 million active users and that the service sees 340 million Tweets a day.
It was once notorious for its down times, but has since improved its performance. Still, the sheer popularity of the site -- and its heavy use by up-to-the-second journalists -- mean that even modest outages quickly become news. In June, Twitter experienced problems that lasted about two hours. The company blamed a technical glitch.
The latest breakdown came only hours before the Olympics are expected to bring an unprecedented surge of activity by sports fans on Twitter, among other social networking sites. At the recent UEFA European Football Championship final, users fired off more than 15,000 tweets per second, setting a sports-related record for the site.
Social media users were already complaining about an earlier outage that affected Google's chatting services. The Mountain View, California-based company said Thursday morning that the majority of users were seeing error messages and unable to use its Google Talk service. The issues were resolved five hours later.
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LONDON (AP) -- People across much of the planet were having problems accessing Twitter on Thursday, a day before the 2012 Olympic Games are expected to cause a spike in use of the micro-blogging site.
The San Francisco-based company acknowledged the problem, saying in a statement that its engineers are "currently working to resolve the issue," although it didn't go into any further detail.
Visitors to the site were greeted with a half-formed message partially in code saying that "Twitter is currently down."
The fields where a reason for the outage and a deadline for restoring service were apparently meant to go were filled with computer code.
Sluggishness or outages were reported from countries in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.
Some users were apparently able to post updates -- known as "tweets" -- through their phones or third-party applications. Updates about the Olympic torch -- which is currently wending its way through central London -- were still pouring in, albeit far more slowly than earlier in the day.
About an hour after issues were first spotted, service appeared to be restored in parts of the U.S. and Asia, but users elsewhere continued to report problems.
The Olympics are expected to bring an unprecedented surge of activity by sports fans on social networking sites such as Twitter.
At the recent European Championship final, users fired off more than 15,000 tweets per second, setting a sports-related record for the site.
Social media users were already complaining about an earlier outage that affected Google's chatting services. The Mountainview, Calif.-based company said Thursday morning that the majority of users were seeing error messages and unable to use its Google Talk service. The issues were resolved five hours later.
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LONDON (AP) -- People across much of the planet were having problems accessing Twitter on Thursday, a day before the 2012 Olympic Games are expected to cause a spike in use of the micro-blogging site.
The company acknowledged the problem, saying in a statement that its engineers are "currently working to resolve the issue," although it didn't go into any further detail. Visitors to the site were greeted with the half-formed message: "Twitter is currently down for %(equals) reason %."
"We expect to be back in %(equals) deadline %," the site said.
Sluggishness or outages were reported from countries in North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Some users were apparently able to post updates -- known as "tweets" -- through their phones or third-party applications. Updates about the Olympic torch -- which is currently wending its way through central London -- were still pouring in, albeit far more slowly than earlier in the day.
The Olympics are expected to bring an unprecedented surge of activity by sports fans on social networking sites such as Twitter.
At the recent European Championship final, users fired off more than 15,000 tweets per second, setting a sports-related record for the site.
