All MSN websites down, though Hotmail back online

At the time of writing, 9pm PT, all msn websites around the world are down and have been since around 8.30pm PT.

A post on MSN’s Twitter feed at 8.50pm PT said, “We’re currently experiencing an outage at www.msn.com We’re aware of the issue and working to resolve it. Thanks for your patience.”

In response to a tweet from someone complaining that they couldn’t access their Hotmail account, MSN tweeted: “It’s totally inconvenient and we’re working to resolve it as fast as we can. sorry about this.” The cause of the outage is not immediately known.

UPDATE: A tweet from MSN at 9.05pm PT said the company isn’t sure what the cause of the outage is and promised to tweet when it found out. “We’re working to find out why. this is an unusually long outage for us. sorry,” said another Twitter post from the company.

UPDATE 2: Hotmail appears to be working again, as of 9.30pm PT. However, the company is still working on msn.com. This is a pretty long outage. All ready for the cloud then?