On Friday, users from San Francisco, New York, and other areas reported that they couldn't access Facebook on their mobile or desktop. As a result, they used the #facebookdown hashtag in Twitter to announce to the whole world that they couldn't post their selfies, access their news feeds and check their friends' statuses in Facebook.
In an official statement from the social networking site, Facebook says, "Earlier this morning, some people had trouble accessing Facebook for a short time. We quickly investigated and are currently restoring service for everyone. We're sorry for the inconvenience."
Based on the report of the website known as downdetector.com, the disruption in the social networking site began at about 1600 GMT and seemed to have a duration of less than an hour. Facebook still hasn't figured out the exact cause although the problem seemed more like a technical issue.
During the site's outage, thousands of FB users complained that the site cannot be accessed. In Los Angeles, some residents tried to contact the emergency service number 911 to ask about the service's restoration.
However, the number of calls increased to an unbelievably huge number which prompted Sgt. Burton Brink who is stationed in Crescenta Valley to send out a tweet. In his official Twitter account, he says, "Facebook is not a Law Enforcement issue, please don't call us about it being down, we don't know when FB will be back up!" Perhaps there are several Los Angeles residents who believe that police stations have a way of controlling the company from Silicon Valley.
Sgt. Brink admitted that they usually get such type of calls. "We get calls all the time like this, cable TV, all sorts of things not working, they think we control," he says. Brink wanted to discourage people to make additional calls about the Facebook outage. These calls may keep their phone lines busy which can affect an incoming emergency call.
The recent service disruption wasn't the first time that Facebook has experienced in recent weeks. Users in Tokyo, London, New Delhi, and Moscow reported that they could not access the social media site for half an hour in June.
Despite all the tweets and calls to 911 from frustrated users, one person didn't seem surprised with the Facebook outage. Principal analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence says, "Facebook is running a massive, global operation. In a way, it's surprising that this doesn't happen more often. I don't think there will be any fallout from this. Only if a pattern of outages emerge does it become a problem."
