SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter experienced widespread problems Wednesday as users trying to post instead got error messages, the most serious disruption in the service since Elon Musk bought the platform in October.
It was not immediately clear what caused the disruption or if the problems were universal, but for about an hour, many users received an error message that they were "over the daily limit for sending Tweets."
Some users said they were able to post if they scheduled their tweet to publish later rather than immediately.
Later Wednesday, Twitter's main posting service seemed to return to working order, but various other features including direct messages seemed to still have problems.
More than an hour after the disruptions started, the company said on one of its verified accounts that it was aware of the problems and was working to fix them.
When trying to retweet someone else's post, some users got an error message: "Sorry! You have exceeded your Tweet limit. Try Retweet again tomorrow."
Twitter does have a daily limit of 2,400 posts per day, according to its website, but that's a ceiling that few users ever hit.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for additional information on the disruption.
Musk's purchase of Twitter for $44 billion and his subsequent decision to eliminate most of the company's staff led to predictions early on that the site's infrastructure might fail, but those predictions had largely not come true before Wednesday.
Downdetector, a website that monitors social media complaints about online service disruptions, showed a sharp spike in Twitter complaints starting around 5 p.m. Eastern time.
NBC News was unable to send tweets from any of its accounts on early Wednesday evening and received the warning about the tweet limit. A scheduled tweet sent through Tweetdeck, a popular Twitter client, did work.
