Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Social Media
  3. News

Twitter has sorted out those weird notifications it was sending

By

Twitter spent a while on Tuesday morning churning out weird notifications to millions of its users.

Anyone who received them may have believed alien forces were trying to make contact. Or that their phone had fried.

Recommended Videos

The unfathomable push notifications consisted of what looked like nonsensical strings of letters and numbers, with some users suspecting a hack or phishing scam that, well … had gone a bit wrong.

Related

The bizarre episode even prompted Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to hop on his smartphone and knock out a few tweets. Responding to one of Twitter’s more peculiar episodes in its 12-year history, Dorsey’s message, which included a screenshot of the strange text, was short and to the point: “We’re seeing this issue too. On it.”

Within a couple of hours, Twitter’s crack team of engineers had apparently sorted the problem out, and restored order to the microblogging site. Well, as much order as you can restore to Twitter.

Taking time out from what must be a busy schedule running not one but two multi-billion-dollar companies, Dorsey tweeted confirmation that the issue had been fixed, but added that the team wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened.

Twitter Support also tweeted a short message aiming to throw a little more light on the unusual happening: “You know those red bubbles that appear when you get notifications? Usually, you wouldn’t see this in numbers and code, but that’s how we talk to your phone so you get those notifications. It’s fixed, we’re good.

If this particular Twitter hiccup has reminded you to finally get around to turning off some of your notifications, then click on the following links for iPhone and Android to find out how to do so.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
4 new Twitter features Elon Musk has hinted at adding
The Twitter app on the Sony XPeria 5 II.

Twitter accepted Elon Musk's bid to buy the social media giant on Monday, and we're still waiting to see two things: If the deal will hold and, more importantly, what a Musk-helmed Twitter will look like after the smoke clears. While no concrete plans have materialized yet for what new features await us in the "new Twitter," Musk has dropped a few hints over the last few weeks about the kinds of changes he'd like to make to everyone's favorite social media hellhole.

So let's take a closer look at those hints. Here are four features we might see in a Musk-helmed Twitter.
Less content moderation
While not quite an app feature, reduced content moderation is still a substantial change to the way users will experience Twitter. And it's a change Musk has tweeted quite a bit about. In fact, some of his tweets indicate an inclination toward relaxing Twitter's current content moderation policies in favor of his interpretation of free speech.

Read more
Twitter is working on a new feature straight out of AIM
Twitter app store listing on a mobile device.

Twitter isn't just working on an edit button. It's also apparently working on a new feature that has a decidedly retro vibe. And we're not sure if we like it or not.

On Thursday night, Jane Manchun Wong tweeted a screenshot of an in-progress status feature. In her tweet, Wong described the feature as being part of Tweet Composer, revealed that it was code-named "Vibe," and said that it could be considered "something similar to the Instagram Threads app’s Status."

Read more
Twitter is testing an ‘undo send’ feature for paid users
A lot of white Twitter logos against a blue background.

We've all hurriedly typed up and sent out a tweet, only to realize as soon as it's posted that it has a typo. And we've all had the urge to tweet something snarky or ill-advised, only to think better of it at the last minute. Now, Twitter is experimenting with a new feature to save users from these dilemmas -- but it will only be available for paid users.

Twitter is testing out an "undo send" function that would allow users to put a stop to their tweets before they are sent. Details are scarce, but it seems that it would work by introducing a small delay between a user hitting post and their tweet actually appearing on their timeline. In this window, they could use the undo send function if they want to edit their tweet or if they decide against posting it.

Read more