Twitter fixes outage and blames crash on software update glitch

Twitter has reversed a software update glitch that caused widespread outage of the social media site's services across Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa. The tech giant said on 19 January that it had corrected the issue but refrained from mentioning if its services are back online for all its users.

The social media giant posted a status update at 6pm GMT (1pm EST) that said that the outage experienced by users in some parts of the world was related to "an internal code change". However, there has been no confirmation from the company about whether its services has been restored to all its users globally, Reuters reported.

"We reverted the change, which fixed the issue," Twitter said in a statement. The company's shares have gone down by almost 7% since the outage was confirmed. Wall Street analysts suggest that the crash could be a cause for concern for the company, which is already believed to be experiencing growth stagnation in terms of users and advertising revenue.

Victor Anthony, analyst at Axiom Capital Management said, "The current market malaise and the recent site outages are compounding the negatives and having a very negative reaction on the shares."

Twitter's mobile and internet services began crashing across northern Europe after around 8am GMT (3am EST). Users from Saudi Arabia to South Africa also reported experiencing outages, according to a Twitter technical site. The site also listed Russia and India as experiencing issues with site performance. Service breakdown followed in the US and Canada as well.

Six hours after users first started experiencing Twitter site issues, sporadic disruption of services continued. Despite the tech firm's efforts to restore users' access to their site, people continued to experience issues. However, some argue that services could not have been down for everyone as the hashtag #twitterdown was one of the top trending topics on the site. No further comment has been made by the company.