Elon Musk was left furious after Ron DeSantis' Twitter Spaces campaign launch saw his own app crash repeatedly
- Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign launch on Twitter Spaces was spoiled by delays and glitches.
- According to Platformer, Elon Musk was left furious by the bugs which saw his own app crash repeatedly.
After a Twitter Spaces campaign launch spoiled by delays and technical glitches, Ron DeSantis' team bragged that it "broke the internet" due to his popularity.
But behind the scenes, Elon Musk was left furious over the problems his platform faced on Wednesday, Platformer first reported.
According to the tech newsletter, even Musk's own app — he uses an employee-only version called Earlybird — crashed repeatedly during the event.
An Insider source corroborated Platformer's report and said that Musk was clearly upset and annoyed by the issues with the event.
Several users said their Twitter apps crashed during DeSantis' announcement, which was more than 20 minutes late to start due to technical glitches.
Three Twitter employees told The New York Times that staff had been worrying whether the platform could handle all the traffic, and there was no plan for any reliability issues.
"Spaces was largely a prototype, not a finished product," one ex-Twitter staffer told CNN. "It's a beta test that never ended."
David Sacks, a venture capitalist and former PayPal executive who cohosted the event, claimed the event was "by far the biggest room ever held on social media."
But even its peak 600,000 listeners was well behind the 30 million who attended Travis Scott's virtual Fortnite concert, and the 2.5 million who watched the PlayStation showcase on the same day as the Twitter Space.
Sacks told The New York Times his claim was based on data given to him by a Twitter engineer. "I've asked for more detailed analytics, but they're a little busy right now," he added.
Publicly, Musk also claimed it was "the top story on Earth," but a look at the world's newspapers and Google search data showed people were far more interested in the death of Tina Turner.
Insider contacted Twitter for comment. The company responded with an automated message that didn't address the inquiry.