Facebook Is Down On Web And Mobile [Update: It’s Coming Back After 20 Minutes]

Is Facebook Down? Why yes it is. [Update: Err, was. As of 1pm PST, service has returned to the US, Germany, and other places after a roughly 20 outage, though some users are still having trouble accessing the service.] Users reported the social network went down on web and mobile in the US as well as the UK, Germany, Thailand, Portugal, and other parts of the world at around 12:40pm PST. With earnings of $2.91 billion in Q2 2014, Facebook theoretically loses about $22,453 for every minute it’s down around the globe. However, since this was pretty prime browsing time for Facebook’s key markets in the West, it was likely losing a lot more. The 20 minute outage could have cost it around a half million dollars.

Downtime trackers showed the outages too. We’ve contacted Facebook for info about how widespread the problem was, and the cause, and when all users worldwide can expect it to work again. Facebook has had an uncharacteristically problematic summer with major outages in May, June, and August.

We’ll have more info when we hear back from Facebook.

Update: Facebook provided this statement.

“Earlier today we encountered an error while making an infrastructure configuration change that briefly made it difficult for people to access Facebook. We immediately discovered the issue and fixed it, and everyone should now be able to connect. We apologize for the inconvenience and will thoroughly investigate this issue so we can learn from it and ensure that Facebook is there when people need it.”

For now, here’s some of the best Internet art criticizing Facebook for sucking away our time (all rights and accolades go to the original artists).

Feel free to take this moment to go outside or have a quiet moment of reflection before the feed starts gushing again.

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