If you noticed that Facebook didn’t work for you today then you weren’t the only one.
In fact, people around the world are still experiencing the after effects of what is the largest outage to ever hit the social media service in its still brief history.
Typically, Facebook experiences difficulty for a few hours then everything is back to normal; today, however, the service was down for most of the day and Instagram and WhatsApp accounts are reporting similar chaos.
For what it is worth, my personal Instagram feed and even my followers list was totally empty for most of the day.
To give us all some perspective, the BBC points out that the last time Facebook faced something this big was back in 2008 when the social media platform had roughly 125 million users.
That number has since grown to 2.3 billion today, meaning the magnitude and scale of the outage today is leagues beyond what it was over a decade ago.
The main Facebook page seemed to be able to load throughout most of the day but many users reported issues with posting new content or sending stuff to friends.
The outage even impacted Facebook Workplace, the business arm of the social media service that provides communication and collaboration tools for coworkers.
People on the Internet are, naturally, reacting with the utmost restraint and probity.
And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Some Internet commenters have likened the Facebook outage to the apocalypse while others have said this is Twitter’s golden opportunity to leverage itself while Facebook is down.
As of press, services weren’t fully restored though the company keeps promising things should be back to normal very soon.
We’ll keep you updated as new information comes about.
Did you experience today’s Facebook outage? If so, let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
1 Comment
Yes. I experienced it. I thought it was something wrong with my account, as I kept getting a message saying there is a problem with your account- we are working on it. I couldn’t ‘like’ any post or comment on any post. I could post on my own account.