Is Twitter down? What does 'cannot receive tweets at this time mean' and why is Twitter down in the UK?

Social networking site Twitter has over 19 million users in the UK.

The site is used to share short thoughts and can often be used both professionally and more casually.

However, during the late afternoon of February 11th, thousands of users began to report having issues with the site and the app.

Reports began flooding in around 5pm on February 11th. Photo: LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP via Getty Images.

Here’s what we know about the outage so far.

Is Twitter down?

As of 5.47pm on Friday February 11th, Downdetector showed 15,897 reports of issues with Twitter.

Of that number, 48% were to do with the app, 42% with the website, and 11% with logging in.

Problems began around 5pm on February 11th.

What does 'cannot receive tweets at this time mean'?

For many users, the problems are showing up with a message on the app or website stating that it 'cannot receive tweets at this time mean'.

This can be caused by lack of internet connection, but the widespread nature of the outage suggests that something else is happening.

Other users have reportedly not been able to log into their accounts at all, on both the app and the desktop website.

Why is Twitter down in the UK?

Twitter updated its official status page with the following explanation for the outage.

"We're experiencing an elevated level of API errors starting around 17:41 UTC and are currently investigating,” the statement reads.

"The presence and scope of any customer impact has not been determined at this time, but we will provide an update as soon as we know more.”

An 'API Error' message often refers to something going wrong with the API request, which can be due to a missing parameter or module.

We’ll have to wait to hear more from Twitter to establish what exactly the issue is and when it might be solved.

Stay up to date on the latest by checking the official status page.