Twitter is set to inform its staff on Friday whether they have been laid off, temporarily closing its offices and preventing staff access, following a week of uncertainty about the company's future under new owner Elon Musk. "In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday," said an email, seen by Reuters.

Twitter said its offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended in order "to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data”.

Meanwhile, several Twitter users reported that they were unable to access the social media site as they were unable to log in to their accounts, according to media reports. A popup that reads "Something went wrong, but don't worry - try again" appears when the feed page first loads. According to a media report, the outage started around 3 am and saw a relatively big spike around 7 am.

Netizens flooded the internet with memes about the situation. Here are Twitter users’ funny take on Twitter being down and Twitter layoffs.