Web Secret #252: Is it down right now?

You've decided to go on Twitter and tweet about the amazing iWebU blogpost you just read.

You click on the link or enter the url for Twitter, and nothing happens. It's not loading. It's taking forever to load. And if you're like me, someone with the patience of a toddler, you go nuts almost immediately. And paranoid.

What's going on?

Is my 5 year old computer finally biting the dust?

Did those Chinese Army hackers finally infect my laptop with nefarious malware?

Wait - maybe this has nothing to do with me. Maybe it's Twitter's fault?

In this type of situation, unless you are staring at the blue screen of death, the first action to take is visiting "Is it down right now?."

In addition to posting a summary of the health of various key websites, (think Pinterest, Chase and Netflix,) iidrn let's you enter the web address of the offending website and get quasi instant comforting feedback, like "It's not you, Twitter is down."

Less reassuringly, you might get this message, "The website is probably down just for you." In addition, you are told when that website was last down, eg "More than a week ago."

If you get that message, it's time to call Apple Cares or contact your ISP.

But most of the time, it is them, not you and if you just wait a while, it ends up working just fine.

Thank you, iidrn.