Twitter announced its quarterly earnings Tuesday, but the reveal didn't go as planned.

Rather than releasing them just after the market closed at 4:00p.m. ET, the company's less-than-stellar performance was unveiled early — by the data service Selerity.

This sent Twitter's shares into a tailspin, with $TWTR stock down more than 18% at the closing bell.

See also: Twitter's leaked earnings report shocks investors, drives stock down 18%

Although the company managed to briefly halt trading, and says that it is investigating the source of its leak, it seems likely that what happened was bad information management on Twitter's part. On its earnings call with investors, Twitter made sure to put the onus of the blame for the situation on the Nasdaq-owned Shareholder.com, the company it pays to maintain its investor relations page.

Selerity maintains that it didn't hack into anything; it simply found the information on Twitter's own public investor relations website.