Twitter experienced global disruptions on Tuesday that prevented many of its 300 million users from staying connected or from logging on to the social network in the first place.

The company cited a technical problem in a recent code change as the cause of the problems, which began around 3 a.m. Eastern Standard Time and prevented many users from sharing updates on their smartphones, computers and other mobile devices. About 1 p.m., the company said it had reversed the change, which fixed the issue. Twitter declined to specify how many of its users were affected.

“Thank you for your patience,” Twitter said in a status update.

Although the disruptions were among the most extensive the company has encountered, Twitter is not the only popular social network to have faced technical problems. Facebook, whose users now number more than 1.5 billion worldwide, has also had a spate of shutdowns over the last 18 months, though often the problems have been corrected within hours.

Because Twitter is an important news source, as well as a popular sounding board, the shutdowns disrupted the global conversation. When other technology and media companies have faced similar problems in the past, people have often turned to Twitter to vent their frustrations — an outlet unavailable this time because the platform itself was the cause of the problem.