According to various media reports, users of social networking giant Twitter are facing several issues accessing the application and not being able to use several features available on the platform. The latest incident of outages and accessibility related issues on Twitter come a few days after the social media company announced additional layoffs.
Several users reported seeing a welcome message when they accessed the Twitter platform, which read “Welcome to Twitter! This is the best place to see what’s happening in your world. Find some people and topics to follow now.” This message is typically displayed to new users who have not yet followed anyone on the platform. The app version of Twitter also displayed a similar message with a “Let’s go” button that directed users to a list of suggested users to follow.
Users were facing difficulty accessing their feed posts on Twitter after encountering an initial welcome message upon opening the platform. They were unable to view posts from the people they actually follow from their profiles, and although users could still tweet from the main page of their accounts, there was no feed where they could view their own tweets. Twitter’s search feature was also reported to be unreliable during this period.
Recently, Twitter underwent a layoff of almost 200 employees as part of CEO Elon Musk’s strategy to decrease operational expenses in the social media company. Since Musk took over as CEO of Twitter in 2022, the total number of employees has decreased by almost 75%. Although there is no direct evidence linking the recent outages to the layoffs, news reports propose that various significant departments in the social media company are currently understaffed.
Twitter has experienced several outages in recent months, affecting its website and mobile app. The company has cited technical issues as the cause of these outages, and has apologized to its users for the inconvenience. The most recent major outage occurred on February 25, 2023, and lasted for several hours, affecting users worldwide.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc and SpaceX, acquired Twitter on October 27, 2022, for $44 billion. Musk had initially accepted Twitter’s invitation to join its board of directors before making an unsolicited offer to purchase the company. At Twitter, Musk plans to introduce new features, make algorithms open-source, combat spambot accounts, and promote free speech.
