Facebook Suffers Hour-Long Disruption Because of Technical Error

By Cornelius Rahn and Grace Huang  

Facebook Inc. (FB)’s social network and its Instagram photo-sharing service were disrupted for users worldwide for about an hour because of a technical error by the company.
“This was not the result of a third-party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems,” Facebook said in an e-mailed statement. “We moved quickly to fix the problem, and both services are back to 100 percent for everyone.”
Users were able to log in and get updated feeds within an
hour of finding the service inaccessible on Tuesday. Dating service Tinder Inc. also reported a disruption. On Twitter (TWTR), #facebookdown was a trending topic globally.
With more than 1.3 billion users, Menlo Park, California-based Facebook has previously faced interruptions, including one in August. Internet services such as Sony Corp.’s PlayStation Network and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox Live have gone temporarily offline in recent weeks because of hacking.
Web users took to Twitter to quip about today’s disruption. Assad Tannous, using the @AsennaWealth name, wrote: “Invest in baby related stocks. #FacebookDown for an hr long enough to start a baby boom in 9 mths.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Cornelius Rahn in Berlin at crahn2@bloomberg.net; Grace Huang in Tokyo at xhuang66@bloomberg.net

Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

With more than 1.3 billion users through desktop computers and mobile devices, the... Read More

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong