Facebook and Instagram suffer global outage

CALIFORNIA, U.S. - In a global connection failure that affected social media users on Wednesday, Facebook and Instagram are said to have been affected by problems starting 4 pm. 

According to website Down Detector, which monitors service disruptions, both the social media websites suffered a crash that affected computers, smartphones and apps.

Even though the connection problem took Facebook and Instagram offline across the world, Europe and North America were said to have been worst affected.

Still, there were some users who were able to access their accounts, even though others suggested that only certain parts of the websites were functioning. 

However, the instant messaging service Messenger appeared to be unaffected.

Social media users tweeted about the problem using the hashtag #FacebookDown that began trending globally on Twitter.

Users that were unable to access the social media site saw the message, “Facebook is down for required maintenance right now, but you should be able to get back on within a few minutes. In the meantime, read more about why you’re seeing this message. Thanks for your patience as we improve the site.”

A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement released later in the day, “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.”

However, the social media giant did not provide any official reason for the outage.

It just added that it is expecting the issues to be resolved shortly.

While both Facebook and Instagram have been fairly stable in the face of growing number of cyber attacks recently, both services experienced an outage in August this year.

Neither of the sites, however, disclosed the cause of the outage.

Facebook has over a billion users across the globe.