Social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) experienced a significant global service outage late on May 23, disrupting timelines, direct messages, and notifications for users across multiple continents. The cause: a critical failure at one of the company’s data centers.
The incident, which began around 11:30 PM IST, quickly escalated into a full-scale service disruption. By 1:16 AM on May 24, outage tracking services had logged over 6,000 reports worldwide, with India emerging as one of the most heavily affected regions.
What Went Wrong
In an official statement issued by X Support, the company confirmed that “a data center-level issue temporarily impacted service availability for users globally.” Engineers worked through the night to restore core services, with partial functionality returning by early morning. However, as of May 24, intermittent problems continue to affect users.
Common issues still being reported include:
- Broken or delayed notifications
- Inability to send or receive direct messages
- Login failures and access errors on mobile
- Delayed follower updates
- API errors affecting third-party developers and bots
- Temporary loss of access to X Pro (formerly TweetDeck) tools
Incident Timeline
| Event | Time (IST) | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Outage begins | ~11:30 PM (May 23) | Users report inability to load timelines, send DMs |
| Peak disruption | 1:16 AM (May 24) | ~6,000 global reports logged; India among worst-affected |
| Partial recovery | 3:00 AM onwards | Timeline access begins restoring; intermittent DM issues remain |
| Persistent issues | As of May 24 morning | Notification delays, API failures, and sporadic access reported |
Regional Impact
While the outage was global, user reports suggest that the impact varied significantly by region:
| Region | Severity | Observed Issues |
|---|---|---|
| India | Severe | Timelines failing to load, DMs broken |
| U.S. & Europe | Moderate | App crashes, notification failures |
| Asia-Pacific | Moderate | Login errors, slow feed refreshes |
The Times of India cited backend infrastructure as the likely root of the failure, based on internal sources.
A Pattern of Instability?
This marks the fourth major disruption of service since the beginning of 2025. Previous outages on January 12, February 9, and March 3 saw similar issues, including broken notifications and non-functional DMs.
These frequent technical problems have fueled growing concern among users, developers, and advertisers about the platform's infrastructure reliability since its rebranding and management overhaul.
| Date | Issue |
|---|---|
| Jan 12, 2025 | Notifications not delivering |
| Feb 9, 2025 | Direct messages not loading |
| Mar 3, 2025 | Web interface went blank for many users |
What’s Next?
While X has restored the majority of its services, the lingering bugs and repeated nature of these outages raise questions about the platform’s operational resilience.
Analysts say that infrastructure modernization may be necessary to prevent future disruptions. For now, users are advised to report ongoing problems via X’s Help Center and wait for further updates from the platform’s engineering team.