Londoners puzzled as TfL posts string of Twitter messages in binary code
Londoners were left puzzled after Transport for London’s main traffic Twitter account shared a string of messages completely full of 0s and 1s.
Confused travellers asked whether the account had been hacked after it posted the mystery tweets on Friday afternoon.
It later emerged that the TfL online account, which issues alerts about traffic in the capital, was using binary code – a system used by computers.
The first message, written in a lengthy series of digits, read: “Matt here again, talk to me.”
01001101 01100001 01110100 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01100111 01100001 01101001 01101110 00101100 00100000 01110100 01100001 01101100 01101011 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101110
— TfL Traffic News (@TfLTrafficNews) December 11, 2017
Scores of other people skilled in computers replied with comments in binary code.
“Hey Matt, have a great shift,” one person replied completely in binary code, while another person simply wrote “01101110 01100101 01100001 01110100”, which translates to “neat”.
Others flooded the social media worker with questions, including: “What dya think about Brexit?” and discussions on Christmas shopping.
Most people were delighted and made the most of their chance to use binary code, but others thought security on the account had been compromised.
“Is your TfLTrafficNews account hacked?” asked Kyle Lindeque while David Cavanagh said: “Looks like your keyboard isn’t well.”
A spokeswoman for TfL told the Standard that workers on social media accounts are encouraged to use their creativity and added he has been putting out the necessary traffic updates as well.
Computers use binary to store data. Each binary digit, the 0 or 1, is called a "bit" to make a binary number. All software, music and documents are stored using binary code.