Let’s pretend that today you went on your lunch break. You went to your favorite lunch spot, and when you sat down to “check-in” and sign on to Facebook all you saw was, “Sorry, something went wrong”. For millions of people that was a reality today. The lucky ones were able to load the homepage, but that was the end of the line.
It appears the issue only kept Facebook down for an hour, but that hour was lunchtime (around 12pm) for millions of Americans, so undoubtedly many were affected. The social media site that has over a billion monthly and an average of over 800 million daily users, booted users off, forcing them to sign back in, only to discover that Facebook still was not functioning properly.
The mobile app appeared to be functioning properly, but appearances can be deceiving as no updating was possible. After signing in, and being forced to resign in, the app was proven not to be in working order.
It is unclear what may have caused the issue, but one can speculate on the reason. Facebook sent an email to all users on July 29th explaining a mandatory download : “We wanted to let you know that messages are moving out of the Facebook app to our Messenger app, a free app that's faster and more reliable for everyday messaging.” Is there something more happening behind the scenes?
Facebook also made a slight change to its homepage recently. It’s not a massive alteration but certainly noticeable if you look for it. The globe we are used to seeing at the top of our homepages now recognizes one’s geographic location when signed in. This alteration has been tested and developed for a couple years now, so it would be hard to pin the blackout on it.
According to downdetector.com, nearly 10,000 have reported the outage beginning at 12p ET; coincidence? I would say most likely not. Something is going on behind the scenes and it’s not out of the realm that the cause is the change in messenger.
In the meantime, Facebook is back online, with no explanation for outage. Users must go back to their last communication from the social media giant (the lovely email from July 29), “We appreciate your taking the time to install Messenger and know it will take a little while to adjust to using a second app. We look forward to sharing this fast, fun and reliable way of messaging with you.” One thing is clear, there doesn’t seem to be much reliable news surrounding the events of today, and only time will tell if we ever get a reason why.
Stay tuned to TechZone360.com for the latest developments.
Edited by
Adam Brandt
