(Yicai Global) July 15 -- Bilibili is giving its hundreds of millions of users one-day free membership to make amends for a sudden failure of its mobile app and website on the night of July 13 that lead to an outbreak of hysteria on social media, the Chinese video-sharing platform said yesterday.

Bilibili members can watch movies and TV dramas that are normally pay-per-view including ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ as well as ‘The Return of the King,’ the final instalment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The breakdown of Bilibili’s mobile app and website at 11 p.m. that night led to a social media frenzy. The blackout was the most searched for topic on microblogging website Weibo and the number of reads topped 630 million as of 7 a.m. yesterday.

There were even rumors circulating online that a fire had broken out at Bilibili’s headquarters in Shanghai prompting the municipal fire department to deny this was the case.

Bilibili, which has 60.1 million active daily users and 223 million monthly active users, said at 2 a.m. yesterday that the blackout was due to the crashing of some of its servers, but that the issue was immediately rectified and services are back to normal.

Editor: Kim Taylor