Down for everyone or just me?

Ways to check if a website is down:

http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
Ping
Traceroute

(Either ping or traceroute may be disabled for security reasons. Dreamwidth's ping is, Twitter and Livejournal's ping are active. If you think your ping problem may be that ping is incorrectly installed, ping 127.0.0.1. That's the computer you are on, and you should always be able to connect and always have a really fast connection. Unless, of course, you've disabled ping.)

Don't post to your other social media/network site about a website being down. People doing Denial of Service attacks are looking for notoriety; everybody talking about the down service is part of their pwnage.

Also, if you want to give people invite codes, dw_codesharing is the official community. There's also dreamwidth. I have had some success tweeting invite codes with a #dreamwidth hashtag.

Last but not least, if you are concerned about being on a widely known microblogging website which is an attractive target for Denial of Service attacks, consider installing laconi.ca or using one of the open installs, like identi.ca.