Monday, October 21, 2013

Facebook down

Hold onto your social-media-addicted hats, folks, but Facebook is experiencing a major outage this morning. The service isn't down, per se. It'll still load up and you can still navigate the site. Mobile apps can still connect to the mothership, as well.

The problem revolves around posting anything new. Most folks are currently unable to post new status updates, comment on existing ones, upload photos or send messages to each other. Mashable's got a quick update here, and I'll add more as they become available.

Which, on balance, is pretty much the core set of reasons anyone would use the service in the first place.

Twitter, anyone?

Update - 10:24 a.m. ET: Yahoo! Canada has published my article: Facebook suffers global outage
I'll be updating the piece as this event plays out.

11:02 a.m.: The article has been updated with additional detail re. who's affected and how, previous outages, and what Facebook is doing to address the issue. More soon...

12:20 p.m.: I've updated the article again as the service is now back to normal, and Facebook has shared details re. what caused it. The piece carries a new title, as well:
Facebook back to normal after suffering global outage
Looks like we can all go back to our regular lives. I'll never cease to be amazed at how something like this causes so many to react so, uh, overtly. Chill, folks, chill.

5 comments:

21 Wits said...

Have we reached an all time low? Powerless without our Facebook! Oh my! Twitter is a powerful choice! I do worry about our Blogger though, because I have more trouble with it than I ever have with FB or Twitter!

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Seems like several of the websites I usually visit are not working well, even though they have no apparent connection to Eff-Book.

For instance, blogger sites that use Disqus as the comment system are failing to load consistently.

P.S. Eff-Book is a tool of Satan. I've mentioned that before, haven't I?
~

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

People you know from Facebook are already using Disqus. You can now follow them and discover new communities! Find your friends »

Saw that when I clicked on the disqus home page. I wonder if they're more connected than I thought?
~

carmilevy said...

I think we're ever too reliant on these tools. Yes, they're powerful and yes, they let us do things we previously could not do. But at some point, it's healthy to simply put them down for a bit and walk away. Thanks for the reminder, Karen: I think a walk in the ravine awaits me this afternoon.

carmilevy said...

Re. Disqus: I'm absolutely certain it's no coincidence. The feeding frenzy of online traffic whenever there's a major event or outage makes it an easy call for a company to ride the wave of publicity whenever something big hits. In this case, they saw something developing and rolled out a very fast response to it.

Brilliant, from where I sit, because that's what I try to do, as well. I saw something going on with Facebook, and quickly got an article approved, written and posted to capture the spike in interest. It's the way news works in today's online world, and it's such a scream to be in the middle of it.