Twitter experienced a significant outage on Wednesday, leaving thousands of individuals worldwide unable to access or use the popular social media platform for many hours before services appeared to be restored.

So far, this is the first big downtime that Twitter has had since billionaire Elon Musk took over the platform and became the CEO in October.

User reports indicate Twitter is having problems since 7:13 PM EST. https://t.co/qqqwagygy9 RT if you're also having problems None

— Downdetector (@downdetector) December 29, 2022
At the height of the outage, more than 10,000 people in the United States, roughly 2,500 in Japan, and about 2,500 in the United Kingdom were impacted, according to Downdetector, a website that analyses outages through several sources, including user reports.

Most of the complaints were about people having trouble logging in through a web browser.

By Wednesday evening, the number of users reporting problems with Twitter had significantly decreased, and several users later reported that service had been restored to normal.

Significant backend server architecture changes rolled out. Twitter should feel faster.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 29, 2022
Later on Wednesday, Musk tweeted that "Significant backend server architecture changes" had been carried out and that "Twitter should feel faster," though he made no mention of the outages that users had experienced.

Some Twitter users reported being locked out of their accounts on desktops and laptops during the downtime. Some users said that the problem also affected the mobile app and how it worked, such as with push notifications.

When using Twitter from a desktop, some users have received the following error message: "Something went wrong, but don’t fret — it’s not your fault. Let’s try again."

Significant backend server architecture changes rolled out. Twitter should feel faster.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 29, 2022
Musk stated via a tweet that he was still able to access the site. Musk wrote, "Works for me," in response to a user who questioned whether or not Twitter was malfunctioning.

When Twitter went down, people posted status updates and memes about it with the hashtag #TwitterDown.

The last Twitter employer trying to reboot the router #TwitterDown pic.twitter.com/YFDJwlGRyR

— jvlfilms  (@jvlfilms) December 29, 2022
Follow 
Twitter users running to Instagram to see if everyone else’s Twitter is down  #TwitterDown pic.twitter.com/NHB2tpLMfB

— PRASHU (@PRASHU_PP) December 29, 2022
Those damn Holiday Parties! #TwitterIsBroken #TwitterDown pic.twitter.com/Ga5vvVTzUA

— AbbySheldonGoddessGeek (@AbbyGeek) December 29, 2022
The new twitter intern wondering what he unplugged #TwitterDown pic.twitter.com/3HuQRg9qhe

— DUA $TAMA  (@duadua888) December 29, 2022