Twitter went haywire for a bit early this week when its timeline feature started causing issues for users due to delays in the delivery process. Even those who tried sending out tweets during the one and a half hour period through which the problem persisted, noticed some sort of hiccup on the social networking and micro-blogging website.
Although Twitter has fixed the problem and even sent out a general apology for the inconvenience caused to users, it has not volunteered any information on the reason behind why the timeline function was slow or stalled. People were apparently spotted reporting delays of between 25 to 45 minutes in their feed as well as tweets deployed.
The glitch which bothered 56 percent of the 974 million or so Twitter users, occurred between 16:51 and 18:30 PST. What about the other 44 percent, you ask? Well, they’ve never bothered tweeting ever, according to this report about the site’s design changes that were aimed at making it more social-centric and as popular as rival Facebook.
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The problems with Twitter’s feed covered delayed mentions and retweets or favorites which went missing altogether. Timeline updates were tardy or simply nonexistent and disjointed direct messages were also witnessed. So if you took to the site to ask who else was facing the hiccup, your followers may have got your tweet a little too late.
The delayed timeline problem affected the main website, the site’s mobile application as well as third-party clients, points out a post on Mashable. It’s a good thing Twitter users didn’t have any Emergency Alerts to send out during that time. At least, the web hasn’t heard of anyone having complained about it as yet.