MSN slowly returning after global outage

By Trevor Mogg September 8, 2011

At the time of writing, 9pm PT, all msn websites around the world are down and have been since around 8.30pm PT. These include Microsoft services such as Hotmail, Office 365 and SkyDrive.

A post on msn’s Twitter feed at 8.50pm PT said, “We’re currently experiencing an outage at www.msn.com We’re aware of the issue and working to resolve it. Thanks for your patience.”

In response to a tweet from someone complaining that they couldn’t access their Hotmail account, msn tweeted: “It’s totally inconvenient and we’re working to resolve it as fast as we can. sorry about this.” The cause of the outage is not immediately known.

UPDATE: A tweet from msn at 9.05pm PT said the company isn’t sure what the cause of the outage is and promised to tweet when it found out. “We’re working to find out why. this is an unusually long outage for us. sorry,” said another Twitter post from the company.

UPDATE 2: Hotmail appears to be working again, as of 9.30pm PT. However, the company is still working on other msn websites. This is a pretty long outage. Everyone ready for the cloud then?

UPDATE 3: Tweet from msn at 10.05pm PT: “we’ve had a global outage and things are slowly coming back online. Very sorry for the inconvenience.” The reason is still unknown, with msn saying it could “take hours to determine the root issue.”

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