Wilson Chipangura, Guest Reporter
SILICON VALLEY – A top official at Facebook has given update on the major global blackout experienced by the company on all its social networks platforms on Monday.
Facebook Inc’s suite of apps, including popular photo-sharing platform Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp, were down for tens of thousands of users, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
Facebook communications exec Andy Stone took to Twitter, which has not been affected, to apologise.
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” he said.
“We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” said Stone.
Prize-winning technology reporter Sheera Frenkel said the issue of the outage at Facebook is more complex with workers reportedly facing complications to access the system.
“Was just on the phone with someone who works for FB who described employees unable to enter buildings this morning to begin to evaluate extent of outage because their badges weren’t working to access doors,” said Frenkel.
The social-media giant’s instant messaging platform WhatsApp was also down for over 22,000 users, while Messenger was down for nearly 3,000 users.
WhatsApp was also trending on Twitter, with more than 850,000 tweets.
“We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment,” the messaging platform’s official Twitter handle said.
“We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible.”
Users have already raised concern on the feasibility of Facebook’s monopoly on social networks that all have an influence on global activities.
“Facebook service outage is really a great data point for the argument that we should not have a global social media platform that dominates multiple lines of communication across various countries and regions,” tweeted one Edward Ongweso Jr.
