New Year in Far East Puts Twitter Offline for Over An Hour

Did you have trouble getting on Twitter Saturday morning?

You can thank your friends in the far east celebrating the New Year, as the New York Times reports that Twitter was unavailable for more than an hour in the United States Saturday morning, likely because of an onslaught of Happy New Years tweets.

"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."

The Daily Mail reports that the social networking site crashed in Britain at about 3 p.m., coinciding with midnight celebrations in Japan where well-wishers sent a record 16,197 tweets per second.