News24 down, ‘technical difficulties’ blamed [Update]

Africa’s largest online news portal News 24 is down. Anyone trying to enter the site receives a standard browser message stating that the site is not available.

Update: The site is now back up.

The company’s Twitter account, which has nearly 180 000 followers, put the outage down to “technical difficulties” but did not elaborate any further:

We’re experiencing some technical difficulties and we’re trying to get the site back up as soon as possible.

— News24 (@News24) August 10, 2012

The story is much the same on its Facebook page. It did, however, attempt to keep people on its good side by asking what they were doing over the weekend.

The online news site, which is owned by emerging markets internet giant Naspers, is part of 24.com, a group 22 web channels with a combined audience of more than four-million monthly users. The company employs around 250 people, including editorial, technical and sales staff — making it the largest online media employer on the continent.