In this photo illustration, Threads logo seen displayed on a smartphone with the Twitter profile of Elon Musk in the background. Elon Musk is the current owner of Twitter. Meta will release a social media app called “Threads”, which will be a rival to Twitter. “Threads” is Instagram’s text-based conversation app.
Mateusz Slodkowski | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Twitter is experiencing a wave of outages just as Meta’s brand-new rival Threads service is racking up tens of millions of sign-ups.
Many Twitter users have reported outages over the past 24 hours, with problems seemingly skyrocketing around 9:30 a.m. ET on Friday, according to data from the Downdetector website. Downdetector accumulates its data from users who spot glitches and report them to the service.
About 70% of the Twitter outages appear related to its desktop service, Downdetector noted. Only 13% were tied to the mobile app.
Twitter’s TweetDeck service, which helps users manage multiple Twitter conversations, has also suffered downtime in recent days after the company announced that only verified users will be able to access it. However, the primary problem appears to be with the core Twitter app, the data shows.
Meanwhile, the Threads app has recorded 70 million sign-ups just a day after its official release as of Friday morning, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Threads post.
“Way beyond our expectations,” Zuckerberg said about the app’s immediate popularity.
On Thursday, Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, who succeeded owner Elon Musk at the helm a month ago, tweeted that the company was “often imitated,” a clear reference to Threads.
Twitter didn’t provide a comment for this story.
