Twitter DMs Trend as Outage and New Features Spark User Reactions

A surge of user frustration and viral memes swept across Twitter (now known as X) on May 22 and 23, 2025, as a major outage disrupted the platform’s Direct Messaging (DM) service for thousands worldwide. The disruption, which left many unable to send or receive DMs, coincided with ongoing rollouts of new messaging features, creating a perfect storm of user engagement and online commentary.

Outage Details and Cause

The outage began around 11 a.m. Pacific Time on May 22 and peaked later in the day, with nearly 6,000 users globally reporting issues. Users in the United States, Canada, Peru, Germany, and India were among those most affected, with 57% experiencing app-related problems and 38% facing website issues. Many encountered persistent errors such as “Something went wrong. Try reloading,” and blank DM inboxes, with some reports indicating DMs were inaccessible for over 10 hours.

The root cause appears to be a fire at a data center in Hillsboro, Oregon, which X leases for its operations. Emergency services responded to the blaze, reportedly in a battery room, but not before the incident compromised data processing and traffic management for the platform. While X’s engineering team confirmed a data center outage, they stopped short of officially linking the fire to the service disruption. The company’s only public statement acknowledged ongoing performance issues and said engineers were working to resolve them.

User Response and Viral Trends

As DMs failed, users ironically turned to the platform’s public feeds to vent their frustrations, sparking the hashtag #TwitterDMs and a wave of memes poking fun at the situation. Some joked about being “ghosted” by the app itself, while others reminisced about more stable times for the service. The outage also fueled criticism of Elon Musk’s leadership, with users noting an increase in technical problems since his takeover.

New Features and Ongoing Updates

Amid the outage, Twitter has been rolling out enhancements to its DM system. Recent updates include:

• Keyword search within DMs, introduced in 2022, allowing users to find specific messages more easily.
• New privacy settings that limit DMs from non-followers to verified users, aiming to reduce spam.
• Voice memo capabilities and swipe-to-reply options, expanding the ways users can communicate within DMs.

Despite these improvements, the outage has highlighted the platform’s vulnerability to physical infrastructure failures and the challenges of maintaining consistent service during periods of rapid change.

Current Status

While most core functions have been restored, some users continue to experience DM issues as of May 23. The company has yet to provide a full post-mortem or confirm the fire’s direct role in the outage. The incident underscores both the growing importance of direct messaging on social platforms and the risks inherent in their complex, global infrastructure.

Quote from X’s Engineering Team:

“X is aware some of our users are experiencing performance issues on the platform today. We are experiencing a data center outage and the team is actively working to remediate the issue.”

As X continues to roll out new features and address technical challenges, user reactions—and memes—remain at the center of the platform’s evolving story.