Some Twitter and Facebook users panicked as the sites went down Thursday . We are fundamentally social creatures , and when we lack our usual communication channels The outages were caused by a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that shut down websites for several hours in what was described as an "act of terrorism." One Twitter user says she felt `` naked '' without her micro-blog . Another says he felt `` jittery '' during the time Twitter was down .
Some Twitter and Facebook users panicked as the sites went down Thursday . The outages were caused by a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that shut down websites for several hours in what was described as an "act of terrorism." One Twitter user says she felt `` naked '' without her micro-blog . Another says he felt `` jittery '' during the time Twitter was down .