Twitter shuts off its internal Slack, employees say didn't pay bills

Twitter has apparently shut off its internal communication system Slack and employees posted on anonymous workplace chat app Blind that the company had stopped paying its Slack bills.

The move left employees baffled and no one worked throughout the day on Friday as they were suddenly unable to communicate, reports Platformer.

Employees also lost access to Jira, a tracking software that allows engineers to ship code and monitor progress on new features.

While some employees communicated over email, some decided to just take the day off and others took two days off.

Jira access was later restored but Slack wasn't down for "routine maintenance."

"There is no such thing as routine maintenance," a Slack employee was quoted as saying.

A Slack spokesperson confirmed that the company did not deactivate Twitter's workspace or user accounts. Slack rarely shuts down services for maintenance.

"We didn't pay our Slack bill. Now everyone is barely working. Penny wise, pound foolish," wrote a Twitter employee.

Another called the disappearance of Slack the "proverbial final straw."

Twitter did not immediately comment on the report.

Meanwhile, the platform was down for several users for a couple of minutes on Friday, and nearly 55 per cent of users reported problems accessing the platform from mobile.

The outage was brief and the services were restored after some time.

--IANS

na/shb/