Twitter Blames Service Turbulence on Bug, Not Hackers
The events that took place on Thursday were "Not how [Twitter] wanted today to go." Twitter went offline for all Web users yesterday morning, and mobile clients had stopped showing Tweets. Had Twitter been hacked? Was the microblogging world coming to an end!? Not exactly.
"This wasn't due to a hack or our new office or Euro 2012 or GIF avatars, as some have speculated today," Twitter explained in a blog post. "A 'cascading bug' is a bug with an effect that isn't confined to a particular software element, but rather its effect 'cascades' into other elements as well. One of the characteristics of such a big is that it can have a significant impact on all users, worldwide, which was the case."
Twitter crashed so hard yesterday that even the Fail Whale didn't make an appearance.
Indeed it was. Twitter was down completely at around 9AM PDT yesterday, and after being brought back online later in the morning, the microblogging service crashed again, leaving celebrities and regular folk with having to seek alternative venues for telling the world what they had for breakfast. Oh, the humanity!
In all seriousness, Twitter has become a major social networking platform, and this was perhaps the worst crash so far. For the past six months, Twitter claims it's been online at least 99.96 percent of the time, and usually 99.99 percent.
"This wasn't due to a hack or our new office or Euro 2012 or GIF avatars, as some have speculated today," Twitter explained in a blog post. "A 'cascading bug' is a bug with an effect that isn't confined to a particular software element, but rather its effect 'cascades' into other elements as well. One of the characteristics of such a big is that it can have a significant impact on all users, worldwide, which was the case."
Twitter crashed so hard yesterday that even the Fail Whale didn't make an appearance.
Indeed it was. Twitter was down completely at around 9AM PDT yesterday, and after being brought back online later in the morning, the microblogging service crashed again, leaving celebrities and regular folk with having to seek alternative venues for telling the world what they had for breakfast. Oh, the humanity!
In all seriousness, Twitter has become a major social networking platform, and this was perhaps the worst crash so far. For the past six months, Twitter claims it's been online at least 99.96 percent of the time, and usually 99.99 percent.
