A "rogue" Twitter employee working a final shift at the social network shut down US President Donald Trump's account - but only for 11 minutes.
Shortly before 11pm Irish time the president's personal account, @RealDonaldTrump, showed an error message saying the user "does not exist".
The company said it had launched a review after the account - which has more than 41 million followers - was made unavailable by a "Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee's last day".
Before that statement, the San Franciso-based company had said: "Earlier today @realdonaldtrump's account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee."
There was praise on the network for the employee, and the president himself made light of the outage, tweeting on Friday: "My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact."
My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
Following that tweet he launched into a tirade of messages against regular targets including "Crooked Hillary" and "the Dems".
Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
Praise for the Twitter employee came from vocal Trump critic Ted Lieu, a Democratic member of Congress, who tweeted: "Dear Twitter employee who shut down Trump's Twitter: You made America feel better for 11 minutes. DM me & I will buy you a Pizza Hut pizza."
Dear Twitter employee who shut down Trump's Twitter: You made America feel better for 11 minutes. DM me & I will buy you a Pizza Hut pizza. https://t.co/ruzaVBcQp1
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) November 3, 2017
Meanwhile, former Republican member of Congress, David Jolly, wrote: "Just gonna say it, the employee at Twitter who shut off Trump's account for 11 mins could become a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize."
Other praise came from @Christopher_Laudando, who wrote: "Employee of the Decade" while @dustin_hughes asked: "Can I contribute to the beer fund for this hero?"
Not everybody was celebrating the news, however. @GOPPollAnalyst wrote: "Why does a Twitter customer support employee have enough access to delete the President of the United States account? WTF".
And @deray tweeted: "I hope that the lives of the existing Twitter employees don't become harder as the result of the one person deactivating Trump's account."
I️ hope that the lives of the existing Twitter employees don’t become harder as the result of the one person deactivating Trump’s account.
— deray (@deray) November 3, 2017