LinkedIn was Inaccessible for Nearly an Hour

The professional networking site LinkedIn was inaccessible for nearly an hour a few minutes back. Saturday morning started with a chaos, professionals tweeting about Error #404: Page not Found, even Error #500: Unknown Host, Error #503: Service Unavailable, login issue and contacting LinkedIn support. The exact cause behind the issue is not yet known. There is a possibility of DDoS attack that crippled GitHub, the code repository on Wednesday.

LinkedIn was inaccessible for about an hour even on Friday just a day after a major update with new features and a special message from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. The site, a professional network that helps people who know each other meet one another's acquaintances who might help their careers, was restored by about 11:30 a.m. ET, the company said.

Website spokeswoman Kay Luo said she had no immediate information on the cause, though she said the site had higher traffic than usual after the new features launched Thursday. According to Kay, LinkedIn also had brief, scheduled outages Wednesday and Thursday, in part to allow it to roll out the features, but DDoS attack cannot be ruled out that even impacted Spotify and Twitter.

Among other additions, the new features let LinkedIn's nineteen million members broadcast their daily activities to their connections, much as the "status" feature at the social-networking site Facebook does. Bill Gates started promoting LinkedIn this week by setting up a profile and soliciting suggestions on the best way to encourage more youngsters to pursue careers in science and technology.