Corporate messaging platform Slack was hit by an unexpected downtime on Monday as users from around the world took to social media, complaining they were unable to send or receive messages.
The massive outage came during the first working day of the new year as people returned to work.
It's the latest tech glitch to show how disruptive technical difficulties can be when millions of people are depending on just a few services to work and go to school from home during the pandemic.
The company's official Twitter account and server status page did not immediately register any issues, later sharing a statement that read: "Customers may experience issues connecting to Slack to loading channels at this time. Our team is on the case and we will keep you posted. Apologies for any disruption."
The outage began around 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time and disrupted service in the U.S., Germany, India, the U.K., Japan and elsewhere. At 12:30 p.m., service was still sporadic and Slack said the outage was ongoing, but that some users may begin to see improvement.
Internet service outages are not uncommon, are usually resolved relatively swiftly and are only rarely the result of hacking or other intentional mischiefs. Google went down briefly in December, with people in several countries briefly unable to access their Gmail accounts, watch YouTube videos, or get to their online documents during an outage Monday. In August, Zoom went down briefly just as many students were beginning the school year at home. And in September, Microsoft services had an outage that lasted for five hours.
