Is Slack Down? Company Reports Outage & Users Post Memes on Twitter

It’s the beginning of the first work week of 2021 with many employees working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic, and Slack has reported a massive outage. With thousands of employees unable to communicate to with coworkers, many switched over to Twitter to post memes instead.

Slack is a platform which facilitates communication through its chatrooms. Users began reporting problems at about 10 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, January 4, 2021, according to Down Detector. At about 10:10 a.m., more than 15,000 users were reporting problems.

Within about an hour, Slack announced that the outage was upgraded to an outage in service. They did not immediately say what caused they outage or when service would be restored, but said they had “all hands on deck” working on the problem.

“Customers may be experiencing issues connecting and using Slack at this time,” Slack wrote on Twitter. “Our team is currently investigating and we’re sorry for any troubles this may be causing. Please see https://status.slack.com for updates.”

Here’s what you need to know about the Slack outage:

Slack Announced They Were Experiencing a Service Outage & Would Report Updates Every 30 Minutes

Slack is reporting updates on its service status every 30 minutes, which they said they would continue until the issue is downgraded.

The most recent update on Slack’s website, posted at 12:29 p.m. Eastern time, said some users may be able to use the platform again after refreshing.

“While the issue is largely still ongoing, we believe some customers may see improvement in connecting to Slack after a refresh (CTRL/CMD + R),” the update said.

The previous update said the company is continuing their investigation into the issue.

“There are no changes to report as of yet. We’re still all hands on deck and continuing to dig in on our side. We’ll continue to share updates every 30 minutes until the incident has been downgraded,” the update said.

An update about 30 minutes earlier detailed the extent of the outage.

“We’re continuing to investigate connection issues for customers, and have upgraded the incident on our side to reflect an outage in service. All hands are on deck on our end to further investigate. We’ll be back in a half hour to keep you posted,” the update said.

Slack posted its first message on the outage at about 10:14 a.m., saying they believed the problems were with connecting to the service and messaging. The most recent update indicated the outage impacted all aspects of Slack, such as log-ins, messaging, calls, and connections, according to The Verge.

The Slack Outage Inspired Memes & a Twitter Trend

With some Slack users unable to communicate through the platform, many took to Twitter to marvel at the false start to 2021 in workplace productivity.

“Slack with everyone coming back to work this Monday,” one Twitter user wrote, and shared a gif of the “It’s fine,” dog, one of the staple memes of 2020.

Another person shared a gif from “Groundhog Day.”

“First work day of 2021 and Slack is down,” he wrote. “Looks like another 2 weeks of 2020.”

The outage caused a moment of panic for another Slack and Twitter user.

“Slack is down. Thought I was fired for a minute,” he wrote.

Another person wrote optimistically that work couldn’t happen without Slack.

“Slack is down, if it doesn’t go back up in 15 minutes then legally work is cancelled,” she wrote.

The Boston Orioles also tweeted a joke about productivity.

Another person joked about having no way to communicate assignments outside of Slack.

“Slack is down so I’m just in my driveway screaming design tasks into the void,” he wrote on Twitter.

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