Twitter Spaces failed to work properly on Wednesday as billionaire Elon Musk prepared to speak to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who threw his hat into the already crowded Republican presidential nomination.
After a delay of several minutes, David Sacks, a venture capitalist with Craft Ventures, introduced Musk, who is CEO of Tesla (TSLA) and also acquired Twitter last October.
But technical glitches interrupted the audio conversation on Twitter Spaces several times. According to Twitter Spaces, 361,000 accounts were listening, which could have contributed to the malfunction.
Musk blamed the servers, saying they were "straining."
After Musk acquired the social media company for $44 billion, he laid off 69% of the employees over several months, including engineers, data scientists and product managers.
Among the GOP listeners were conservative televison host Laura Ingraham, former mayor of New York City and ally of former President Donald Trump Rudy Giuliani, political commentator Tomi Lahren, former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and political strategist Steve Schmidt.
DeSantis announced his bid to be the Republican candidate on Wednesday.
Twitter Reaction
Sacks said the number of listeners was "probably the biggest room that has ever been assembled online."
But Twitter users were extremely disappointed in the multiple crashes.
Grant Cardone, CEO of Cardone Capital, tweeted, "My attempt to listen to Elons Twitter spaces has crashed 4 times Is anyone else having problems This is not how you want to announce a presidency run. Donald Trump will be all over this. So many people love this new form of journalism - servers can’t handle it."
Investor Jason Calacanis and a friend to Musk, speculated whether Twitter was hacked, but provided no evidence.
The lengthy delay was quickly memorialized as well.
