For Millions of Facebook and Instagram users, a worldwide outage of the hugely popular social media platforms on Tuesday proved to be a matter of great concern.
They took to Twitter in droves, trending the #FacebookDown hashtag for hours, half in absolute despair, half in mirth.
The users were just recovering from an unprecedented FB Messenger crash barely 24 hours ago, when the slowdown hit the big brother of social media.
Face book users reported they had trouble posting status updates. For many, the news feeds just would not load. All they would get was a message that said: “Welcome to Facebook”.
Most troubles were limited to Facebook’s desktop version. But the platform’s Android and iOS apps remained accessible.
The Downrightnow portal that tracks such outages had this to say: “Facebook is down with the status – Likely Service Disruption”. However, there was no official word from Facebook till late Tuesday night.
The crash hit the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, Poland, France and other European region users hard.
Indian users, too, reported issues, but with less severity. Instagram, too, had its users complain of severe slowdown in Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong and China.
To complain, most users went straight to Twitter, instantly triggering memes and an outpouring of tweets in mirth. Here’s one tweet: “Facebook and Instagram are down! There are millions of people who are now walking around wondering what else their smart phone can do.”
“Everyone from Facebook and Instagram coming to Twitter to check if they’re down,” went another tweet.