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Did Too Much Well-Wishing Crash Twitter Again?

By JENNA WORTHAM

Twitter welcomed the new year in with a bang– by more than an hour of unavailability Saturday morning.

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

The reason: Look to where 2012 had already begun.
In 2010, the company said that its highest usage for the entire year came mere seconds after midnight in Japan, when users rushed the site to post messages welcoming in the new year on the social network.
It’s possible the same crush of users — likely heightened since Twitter’s popularity grew throughout the year — pushed the site’s limitations, knocking it offline.
“Some people experienced issues connecting early today,” said Carolyn Penner, a spokeswoman for the company, in an e-mail, although she declined to clarify why Twitter went down or for how long the service was unavailable. By early afternoon, the site appeared to be functioning normally for its community of users.
Such outages are not uncommon on Twitter – since its early days, the service has faded in and out, particularly during large events, such as the Super Bowl and awards shows. Those bring an influx of people eager to post their reactions, photos, thoughts and messages to the server.