YouTube users were surprised on Tuesday, Nov 19, when they could not access the popular video sharing site. The 30-minute downtime occurred between 5:20 and 5:40 pm Eastern Time.

What searchers got was a 500 internal server error message which is an indicator that the servers were not working. However, YouTube did not explain the reason behind the technical glitch but only admitted to the down time.

In a statement, quoted by USA Today, YouTube said, "Some people are encountering errors, or a slower than normal experience on YouTube today. We're working to fix the problem as soon as possible."

YouTube is the third-most popular Web site globally, next to Google and Facebook. It has 1 billion users monthly, which could explain the outage as possibly the result of server overload.

YouTube's record holder continues to be Psy's Gangnam Style video which has ballooned to more than 1.8 trillion hits to date.

YouTube/officialpsy

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