--- --- # People Are Getting a Bunch of Cryptic Twitter Notifications and They Don't Know What to Do With Themselves by [Ashley Hoffman](https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/) ## Ashley Hoffman Oct 16, 2018 5:24 PM UTC by [Ashley Hoffman](https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/) ## Ashley Hoffman Oct 16, 2018 5:24 PM UTC On Tuesday, people received some strange-looking push notifications from [Twitter](http://time.com/4799053/donald-trump-covfefe-twitter/) on their phones at around 12:30 p.m. It appears a significant number of users got a few [notifications](http://time.com/5414349/fema-alert/) in a row that all contained a mysterious combination of letters and numbers, followed by a colon and one or more digits. Devoid of any context, Twitter users were quick to question what it all meant. Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey has already tweeted that the company is on it, promising in a tweet Tuesday that “We’re seeing this issue too. On it.” > [](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1052238298402287617) So exactly what is this apparent glitch about? Is “2e1f6171d05a409e9531a2b139d69928: 14” an error, or a much more valuable clue? It’s still unclear, but before long, the Twittersphere was full of questions. > [](https://twitter.com/JackPhan/status/1052237795673104384) > [](https://twitter.com/HashtagGriswold/status/1052243031825555456) > [](https://twitter.com/%5Ftrvly/status/1052242962896248832) > [](https://twitter.com/Lovesmusic96/status/1052242961466052608) > [](https://twitter.com/Official%5FJude%5F/status/1052242870776676355) > [](https://twitter.com/jeremyherb/status/1052236189238026240) > [](https://twitter.com/EdKrassen/status/1052236812842725376) > [](https://twitter.com/andysternberg/status/1052237752761241601) > [](https://twitter.com/StylinsonDaily/status/1052237077667074049) Dorsey later explained that this was a code error, that the company fixed. > [](https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1052260374806851584) Twitter Users Get Strange Letters and Numbers Notification ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5426205/confusing-twitter-notification/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5426205/confusing-twitter-notification/"},"headline":"People Are Getting a Bunch of Cryptic Twitter Notifications and They Don't Know What to Do With Themselves","datePublished":"2018-10-16T17:24:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:55:30.707Z","description":"What does it all mean?","url":"https://time.com/5426205/confusing-twitter-notification/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Tech","viral"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ashley Hoffman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5426205/confusing-twitter-notification/","name":"People Are Getting a Bunch of Cryptic Twitter Notifications and They Don't Know What to Do With Themselves"}}]}] ```