After trying numerous times to log in yesterday, we were hit with the news that popular social networking site Facebook was down due to technical difficulties.
From here to Australia panic fled across other social media sites especially Twitter, at around 9am UK time when people started complaining due to Facebook’s absence; with some even joking that the world was ending because of it.
The issue was resolved after approximately 20 minutes but the social networking site caused quite a furore of posts during that time on rival site Twitter, causing not one but two fun-filled hashtags to trend worldwide - #FacebookDown and #WhenFacebookWasDown
We looked through the tweets and picked our top three;
#WhenFacebookWasDown I couldn't update my status to tell everyone that facebook was down.
— Luke Rey Santillan (@kwanguLUKE) June 19, 2014
Looks like Zuckerberg finally worked out how to get #Facebook trending on Twitter #facebookdown
— Bert Goldsmith (@BertGoldsmith) June 19, 2014
Think how exhausting it's gonna be having to 'Like' things in person again. #FacebookDown pic.twitter.com/GUctboROuL
— Katie Parsons (@KatieParsons) June 19, 2014
Confectionary brand KitKat even decided to get a slice of the action by innovating a fantastic real-time marketing stunt playing on their slogan, “have a break, have a KitKat”, in response to the technical fault with this tweet;
#WhenFacebookWasDown They must have wanted a KITKAT! #HaveAbreak #facebookdown. pic.twitter.com/6wzAgXTByp
— KITKAT (@KITKAT) June 19, 2014
Earlier this year, Facebook was also down across the US and again in the UK last October, which is quite ironic considering Mark Zuckerberg was famously quoted saying “Facebook would never go down” in 2010 movie 'The Social Network'.
With over 1.3 billion active users a month, making it one of the most popular websites in the world according to Sky’s report, these types of technical failures will come at a hefty price to Facebook, costing them hundreds of thousands of pounds in the process. Let’s just hope Facebook resolve these issues longterm so they don’t become a regular occurrence.