Facebook went offline this morning, leaving users unable to access the site.
For about 20 minutes after 9am UK time the social media's website delivered an error message telling users that their accounts were "temporarily unavailable".
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The Facebook developers site also "recorded a spike in response time", ITV News reports.
According to TechCrunch it is not uncommon for "young services" to experience extensive outages. "Twitter, for one, when small, was down chronically," the website said in an article reporting a brief Facebook blackout in May. But Facebook can no longer be considered small "given how mature it is as a platform" so the outage "is a larger issue".
In the immediate aftermath, many Twitter users saw the funny side of the outage:
Productivity is now restored at the same levels of 2004. #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/YCgE96yvJH — Diego Russo (@diegor) June 19, 2014
#FacebookDown! maybe...it's time to go outside? :O Pic credit: http://t.co/QMttZIw9Q9 pic.twitter.com/DIBwWTxOLo — DiGi (@DiGi_Telco) June 19, 2014
On the bright side, you are not being defriended right now. #facebookdown — news.com.au (@newscomauHQ) June 19, 2014
In the past Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and chief executive, was quoted as saying that the site would never crash, The Guardian notes.
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