If you haven't quite been getting your sports news fix on Thursday, chances are it has something to do with Twitter being down.

The popular social media site suffered a widespread outage on Thursday that affected users on multiple continents, and the sports news pipeline was significantly slowed down by the outage.

In reality, news itself probably didn't slow down all that much. As Twitter users around the world were locked out from their 140-character messages, the Olympic men's soccer tournament continued with Gabon taking on Switzerland and Uruguay facing the United Arab Emirates. Any trade talks surrounding Ryan Dempster probably continued unobstructed. Any calls to Vancouver Canucks general manager Mike Gillis about a trade for Roberto Luongo were unaffected. However, for the fans (and media members) using Twitter, news ground to a virtual halt.

Just how important has Twitter become to sports news? When NHL All-Star Rick Nash was traded on Monday from the Columbus Blue Jackets to the New York Rangers , the entire process played out on Twitter. First, it was reported by TSN's Darren Dreger that the trade was "in process." Then, Dreger reported that Nash had been traded for three players and a first-round draft pick. The next significant tweet from Dreger identified center Brandon Dubinsky and defenseman Tim Erixon as two of the players on their way to Columbus, and finally, TSN's Bob McKenzie chimed in to name center Artem Anisimov as the final piece of the Rangers' package. All of this happened before any major news publication or television network could assemble a comprehensive report. And with Twitter out on Thursday, no such reporting could happen.

Eventually, Twitter reopened for business, and we'll be back to getting up-to-the-minute updates on the NHL collective bargaining negotiations, Darrelle Revis at New York Jets training camp, and every other major story in the sports world.

For a while, though, there was nary a tweet.