Facebook Is Down 448
Phil_at_EvilNET writes "Jeff Bertolucci of PC World reports: 'Thousands of Facebook users this afternoon (US Pacific Time) are reporting that the popular social networking site is down. It's unclear when the outage began. PCWorld has not been able to reach Facebook for comment, but Mashable reports the company has confirmed the outage.'"
Facebook Is Down (Score:4, Insightful)
And nothing of value was lost. :-P
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Insightful)
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In other news worker productivity shot up by 150%
Until they realized Slashdot was still up...
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Hey, it's not like Slashdot went down.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Insightful)
Grow up. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing of value was lost to you maybe. But I've got a news flash, the world doesn't revolve around you.
I've got a friend nearing the end of a difficult pregnancy and who is approaching labor, and Facebook is her husband's primary way of keeping friends and family updated as to her condition. That may not be important to you, but to a bunch of people scattered all across the world - it's important as hell. We care about our friends and family and staying in touch with them, in good times and bad.
You may
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He does. But email is not even fractionally as easy or convenient, either for him to send out updates or for us to discuss among ourselves.
Re:Grow up. (Score:5, Interesting)
How is email any different than sending a message on Facebook?
Hint: it isn't at all.
E-mail accounts frequently change. Facebook accounts remain constant.
I can very easily search for my cousin by name on Facebook. How do I easily find out her e-mail address if I haven't seen her for a few years?
Multiply by 50 or 100 family and friends - Facebook is far more convenient.
Re:Grow up. (Score:4, Insightful)
Email is a distributed system that isn't controlled by any single company (or any combination of companies for that matter). As a consequence, email does not go down.
In short, the story that you are commenting in is the reason email is superior to facebook. You needn't look farther.
Re:Grow up. (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, screw her pregnancy man. The kid will come out one way or the other and people will get the news a few days late at best.
I've got corn that needs harvesting. My cows are bursting with milk, and who is going to feed my fucking chickens?
Nobody ever thinks of the farmers......
Re:Grow up. (Score:5, Funny)
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I think there are some serious definitional problems here, or perhaps a new generation needs new definitions. But t
Re:Grow up. (Score:5, Insightful)
What, her Twitter stream isn't enough? How about her email list?
Relying on Facebook for everything is just stupid, and this should be a lesson to your pregnant friend.
Re:Grow up. (Score:5, Interesting)
I get the feeling that there are some people who feel that posting on facebook is the same as maintaining a relationship. And if I was one of those people whose only contact with someone was via facebook updates, I'd not consider the relationship that important.
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Email does NOT work fine (Score:3, Insightful)
Email is much less reliable than FB messages. You can never be sure your email won't disappear in some spam filter.
That is one of the main reasons I use FB!
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How are you going to attach pictures to an electronic mail message, jackass? You can't staple photographs to electrons. Get a grip on reality.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing of hard value was lost, but my mental state really took a nosedive. Honestly, about 6 times I caught myself thinking of status updates relating to facebook being down, wondering why I hadn't changed it, and then realizing that I'm a moron.
Between that and realizing how pathetically addicted I am to frittering my time away on facebook (as opposed to slashdot) has been so depressing that I think I'm going to go home early and play some videogames. Which won't help, so I'll turn to beer.
Ah beer, you never give me DNS error messages...
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I implemented improperly, beer -can- cause DNS issues.
Just last night I was trying to get to 'a beer at the pub after work' and ended up at something called 'Swilling Karkov on the street at 1AM with a convicted felon who doesn't speak a lick of English'. The problem even propagated, this morning my boss had a '404 - Employee Not Found' error.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. I genuinely find it a useful tool for keeping up with people and arranging events.
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I second that and its useful for keeping track of friends' birthdays, ex-girlfriends and such ...:P
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If facebook told people who was perusing their info, would fewer people peruse info?
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Funny)
That's called stalking. You should stop.
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Yeah. You might as well be peeking through her bedroom window. It's just as bad.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Funny)
It's not really stalking if the sole intent is to see which one of you ended up fatter. ;)
-l
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Funny)
That memo's old, hating became too popular, so we're back to liking.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Funny)
And the advertisers find you a useful tool, too.
In the business world, we call it "reciprocity".
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, your phone isn't better and you're just trying to act like you're superior for not using Facebook. It has its uses, which are very numerous, and a lot of people don't use it just for Farmville.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Funny)
I've spend at least 10 minutes editing this post.
Should have spent another minute.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Insightful)
My phone works better and I don't have to wait for a response most of the time.
A phone is great for calling/texting other people who you are in active contact with.
For finding out what happened to all those kids in your eighth grade class photo? Not so much.
I simply posted a class photo on Facebook. Within a few days, everyone save one person was "tagged" on the photo and accounted for. Whether you personally value that kind of information has no bearing on just how cool that is from a geek perspective. That kind of information would have taken me weeks 10 years ago, and everyone would think that I was crazy.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Insightful)
My phone works better and I don't have to wait for a response most of the time.
A phone is great for calling/texting other people who you are in active contact with.
For finding out what happened to all those kids in your eighth grade class photo? Not so much.
I simply posted a class photo on Facebook. Within a few days, everyone save one person was "tagged" on the photo and accounted for. Whether you personally value that kind of information has no bearing on just how cool that is from a geek perspective. That kind of information would have taken me weeks 10 years ago, and everyone would think that I was crazy.
The reason why you like social networking sites is precisely the reason why I dislike them, in that behaviour that was once rightfully considered crazy/creepy is now mainstream.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Funny)
The reason why you like social networking sites is precisely the reason why I dislike them, in that behaviour that was once rightfully considered crazy/creepy is now mainstream.
That's exactly what I love about Facebook. I used to be a total creep. Now I'm a very typical person. I haven't changed.
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behaviour that was once rightfully considered crazy/creepy is now mainstream.
I agree that creepy people can be exceptionally creepy on Facebook and pals - but I did nothing creepy. Had I tracked down each of these people for no real reason other than curiosity... that would be creepy. But all I did was post a class picture... not creepy at all, even 10 or 15 years ago that would have been pretty acceptable.
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Although...I did have a strange feeling inside...as if millions of farmers had suddenly been silenced.....?
I shrugged it off as a side effect of lack of sleep from last night.
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Although...I did have a strange feeling inside...as if millions of farmers had suddenly been silenced.....?
Maybe it was an alteration in Warden's behavior.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Insightful)
Agree with you 100%. Good to know I was not and will not affected in any way. Does anything serious get done on Facebook?
Wow, what a phenomenally smug statement. Why does everything have to have a "serious" use? Social tools are useful and valid things, and 500 million users think so. Or are you more enlightened than every one of them?
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Insightful)
Social tools are useful and valid things, and 500 million users think so. Or are you more enlightened than every one of them?
Donno! That's why I asked. And trust me...if there is something useful that cannot be done [better] any other way, I will join. I haven't found anything so far, so enlighten me.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Insightful)
And you're better than them because you do your ego wanking on slashdot, rather than facebook?
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anything serious get done on Facebook?
About as much serious stuff that gets done on Slashdot.
Re: Facebook Is Down (Score:5, Funny)
I was wondering why my daughter was doing her homework...
Now I know...
Staring at the clock! (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, I'm not quite that bad, but we all know people who are...
Re:Staring at the clock! (Score:5, Funny)
That's why God created Slashdot.
Re:Staring at the clock! (Score:4, Funny)
You think pretty highly of CmdrTaco.
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I can't believe this... Facebook went down so I started working and then I actually finished and now I can't figure out what to do!
Okay, I'm not quite that bad, but we all know people who are...
As if someone's who's happy to dodge work will magically start working again just because a single distraction is removed. Employees who need to be babysat are a burden.
It's back now (Score:5, Informative)
There was a can't resolve DNS error, but it's fixed now.
Who manages their DNS anyway? (Score:2)
This has happened before - they have a problem with their DNS servers, and the entire site becomes unreachable.
I gotta wonder who in their right mind sets the TTL of 25 seconds on a major site? What a great way to overload your DNS servers and make your site unreachable when they go down!
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It's been doing that off and on all afternoon here.
Re:It's back now (Score:5, Interesting)
It was NOT just DNS, as it happened even for IP addresses. There has been a lot of discussion of this over on NANOG - there were http 500 server errors and apparently also some indications of problems with their CDN.
It's just a WA guess, but I bet some configuration change went wildly wrong.
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Nah, they just took down the site to copy it to the NSA.
Hahahahaa (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hahahahaa (Score:5, Funny)
Two words. "Aim higher"
Disapora doesn't look too bad now... (Score:2)
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I'm back in. (Score:5, Funny)
They usually do it on some website, while being social.
What makes their comments better than ones on facebook.
Re:I'm back in. (Score:5, Funny)
> What makes their comments better than ones on facebook.
Proper punctuation. :)
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Re:I'm back in. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because advertisers cannot match up what I write here with who I am.
I see facebook as basically giving all your personal information to advertisers.
Now if I didn't want to be anon, perhaps I would be more interested in Facebook, but I'm not.
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That personal info is pretty useless to advertisers if you're blocking their ads. And if you actually leave the ads on, wouldn't you want them to at least be relevant..?
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clashing colors and lots of half-assed band profiles? ;)
Re:I'm back in. (Score:5, Funny)
your font makes you look like a douchebag.
Never use it again.
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>What makes their comments better than ones on facebook.
Well, for one thing ... they are not on facebook.
No it's not (Score:2)
I was just using it and then I came here to see this story and then I loaded it and the wall post I made before I saw this story was on my front page so WTFOMGBBQ
Isn't it obvious? (Score:3, Funny)
But really China? Really? You have to go straight for the jugular and take down Facebook? There will be mass hysteria, cats and dogs will dance the lambada, and blood will rain from the sky now that you've taken down our new national pastime, Facebook.
/adjusts tinfoil hat to a rakish tilt
But really, wouldn't that be a good way for China to demonstrate how easily they can mess with us?
Inverse Slashdot Effect (Score:5, Funny)
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For the first time ever... mentioning a site was down on ./ made it come back to life.
uh oh...it is gaining sentience...
Recursive Slashdot Effect (Score:2)
So I see Slashdot stories on my Facebook feed.
Including the story (on Facebook) of Slashdot commenting that Facebook was down.
Except that it wasn't (or I wouldn't have seen the story)
Holy recursive effect!
./? Hm? (Score:2)
What is this "dotslash" of which you speak?
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No, it's a zombie! Quick, somebody shoot it in the head before it logs people back in!
Phone apps (Score:2)
The smartphone apps never went down as far as I could tell.
Why is this news? (Score:2)
Websites go down all the time. Amazon has been down from time to time. Why is this new at all, let alone front page news? I shouldn't just blame slashdot though, both yahoo and cnn mention this as well.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, for one thing it's a mistake by a big technology company, one that we generally like to hate. That's either interesting (because they try very hard to prevent such things with redundancy), or funny (because we don't like them). That makes it post-worthy.
But even if you don't use FB, you were probably effected. Those little FB Like buttons have been spreading around like a contagious pox, but they're built on iframes and javascript. That meant that when FB went down, all the sites with those dynamic little buttons had a page element that basically had to time out to finish rendering. If you put the button at the top of your page, your other javascript may not run until the FB JS either ran or timed out.
Net effect? FB going down slowed down a lot of other sites.
Introducing external dependencies you don't control on top of your business critical process can work out so well for people. I'm sure this kind of thing was considered by everyone during the recent "Let's add a like button" craze.
Don't forget sites where many of their users only login through Facebook Connect. That entire chunk of their user population may have been cut off during the outage.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since a few months ago, Facebook has surpassed Google as the website with the most traffic on the web. If #2 Google.com went down, it'd be here as well, so why not #1?
Sorry guys ! (Score:5, Funny)
It was me, i tripped over the servers cord on my way to the bathroom, ive plugged it back in and pressed the button on the front, hope its ok !!
mom
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Only IPv4 (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe this only affected those of you stuck in the last millennium. http://v6.facebook.com [facebook.com]
Aw crap! - real link (Score:4, Interesting)
Nuts, it only works as http://www.v6.facebook.com/ [facebook.com]. Thanks to webmistressrachel for the correction.
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You're right, thanks!
Protest (Score:2)
Culprit has been identified! (Score:5, Funny)
(j/k of course)
It's been down a lot lately (Score:2)
I was wondering why (Score:4, Funny)
Several iEMP devices were 'tested' today (Score:5, Funny)
As soon as the news story broke that Zuckerberg was richer than Jobs, Apple launched EMP weapons at the Facebook datacenters.
Diaspora (Score:2)
Maybe one of the latest commits to Diaspora launched a massive denial of service attack against it :)
Seriously though, it was down for less than 30 minutes, how is this news?
Plan B (Score:2)
Right, everyone back to myspace.
This Just In (Score:5, Funny)
Calls to Facebook headquarters were not answered but when the machine picked up, background noises included explosions, people screaming, and a burly man shouting DOS commands in a fierce staccato.
Authorities were put on alert status and reinforcements were called in to deal with the huge amount of LOLs and WTFs that had begun to pile up at intersections, due to the timing corresponding with the release of teenagers from school and their subsequent activities. Counselors were bracing themselves to deal with the myriad of relationships that have been thrust violently into limbo as users have been unable to hook up, break up, get married, or get "into a relationship" with their BFF.
Evan Williams, CEO of the popular sister-site Twitter, said in a statement that they were jumping in to help. "We've brought more servers online to deal with the influx of users who need to update their status, complain about a political party, or notify classmates that they are, 'skanky hors'." Williams also noted that they were partnering with TwitPic and other add-on services to ensure that the steady stream of photos of asses, children doing stupid things, and people drinking in semicircles would be preserved.
Ag secretary Vilsack presented a sober speech Thursday afternoon, lamenting the millions of dollars in crop and animal losses expected from the downtime of Facebook. "We know a lot of virtual farmers out there are hurting, " he stated. "You should know -- we will be here to help you rebuild."
Meanwhile, during the downtime, researchers discovered a rather large blue space available outside of their houses and middle age housewives were said to be seen in states of ecstasy from a natural phenomenon known as, "sunshine".
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made me snort Coke out my nose.
yer doin' it wrong.
Welcome to Cloud Computing... (Score:2)
Your bastion of security and reliability.
As usual, the Onion got it right first (Score:2)
http://www.theonion.com/articles/48hour-internet-outage-plunges-nation-into-product,779/ [theonion.com]
Kumbaya my Lord, kumbaya (Score:2)
Someone's cryin', Lord, kumbaya;
Someone's singin', Lord, kumbaya;
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya;
Oh, Lord, kumbaya.
Kumbaya.
Just goes to show... (Score:2)
... There's no such thing as too big to fail.
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Death by Script (Score:2)
A few hours ago, there was a /. post about url redirect issues with facebook, twitter, etc. Many people posted links to nice firefox plugins which would filter some of that. At this point, thousands of people are probably pointing all sorts of interesting script-tweaking plugins at facebook to see what happens.
Maybe thats what happened?
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Script-tweaking plugins would reduce the load on Facebook, not increase it. And they only work if the link contains the actual URL like Google's do, these tools can't do anything about URL shorteners.
In other news (Score:2)
real news story: (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook is the opposite of email. (Score:3, Interesting)
The Facebook outage has shown the opposite effect. Today was remarkably productive.
Maybe there could be a combination of the two. We could call it Facemail.
I feel a great disturbance in the social networks (Score:4, Funny)