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19 March 2024

Twitter disables new website

Last month Twitter announced that it had moved its infrastructure to a new home at an undisclosed location. (AFP)

Published

Twitter experienced service disruptions on Tuesday, displaying an older version of the social networking website to some users and becoming completely inaccessible to others.

A message on Twitter's Web page that provides updates on the service's status said: "We've temporarily disabled #NewTwitter. Our engineers are working on re-enabling it and we'll update you shortly."

Twitter, which allows users to send short, 140-character messages to groups of "followers," has more than 200 million registered accounts and has become a popular communications service with businesses, celebrities and protesters in the Middle East.

Last month Twitter announced that it had moved its infrastructure to a new home at an undisclosed location, which the company said would allow it to constantly "stay abreast" of its capacity needs and provide greater reliability.

But a custom-built datacenter in Utah that was meant to house Twitter's gear has been plagued with problems, according to people familiar with the matter, forcing Twitter to move most of the site's operations to a facility in Sacramento, California instead.

Tuesday's disruptions meant that some people were using the version of the Twitter site that preceded a redesign unveiled in September. Other Twitter users were unable to log on at all, and were greeted with a page informing them that "something is technically wrong" and promising to have things "back to normal soon."

A Twitter spokeswoman said the company had no details to provide beyond the statements on its special technical status Web page. 
 
Facebook launches page for journalists

Facebook on Tuesday launched a media resource page to help journalists use the social network as a reporting tool and better connect with their audience.

The "Journalists on Facebook" page is intended to be "an ongoing resource for the growing number of reporters using Facebook to find sources, interact with readers, and advance stories," Justin Osofsky, Facebook's director of media partnerships, said in a blog post.

"The page will provide journalists with best practices for integrating the latest Facebook products with their work and connecting with the Facebook audience of more than 500 million people," Osofsky said.

Facebook has been working with journalists since early 2010 to help make their content more social and Osofsky said the average media organization has seen referral traffic from Facebook soar over 300 percent since then.

Facebook also said it was launching a "Facebook Journalism Meetup" program with workshops on how to use Facebook as a reporting tool.

It said the first one will be held on April 27 at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

Within hours of going up, the Journalists on Facebook page had received nearly 2,300 "likes."

Among those friending the page were CBS television news anchor Katie Couric, ABC's evening news anchor Diane Sawyer and ABC Sunday talk show host Christiane Amanpour, formerly of CNN.