WASHINGTON – Facebook and its family of apps began to slowly return to service Monday following a six-hour worldwide outage whose cause remains unknown.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have resumed operations for some users, though the services appeared to be operating at a slower pace than normal. WhatsApp appeared especially stunted following the blackout.
Over 125,000 people reported outages on Facebook just before noon Eastern time, according to the Downdetector website, which monitors website and app disruptions.
The cause of the widespread outage has not been officially announced, and Facebook, the parent company of a slew of apps and services that includes Instagram and WhatsApp, has not weighed in on the matter but acknowledged earlier Monday "that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products."
In a follow-up statement after some users reported a resumption of service, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone issued an apology to "the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us."
"We're sorry," he said on Twitter. "We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us."
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, who earlier remarked that "it does feel like a snow day," separately apologized for the shutdown, saying "this wasn't how we wanted to start the week."
"Instagram should be slowly coming back online now," he added on Twitter.
Twitter saw a large spike in traffic amid the Facebook shutdown, which prompted some problems on the microblogging website.
"Sometimes more people than usual use Twitter. We prepare for these moments, but today things didn’t go exactly as planned," Twitter Support said.
Facebook stock price down 5%
Facebook saw its stock price plummet more than 5 percent after its services have all gone down globally for hours.
Facebook's stock price was trading at USD325 per share at 3.55 p.m. EDT shortly before the closing bell on the Nasdaq -- down 5.25 percent from the previous close of USD343.01 a share on Friday, according to official figures.
The company's market value lost around USD50.7 billion, standing at USD915.1 billion at the time, down from USD965.8 billion on Friday
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw his net worth decline USD6.1 billion, or 5 percent, to USD116.5 billion on Monday, according to Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires List where he stands at 6th place.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp saw outages earlier worldwide according to the DownDetector website that tracks internet service outages.
Nearly 124,000 outages have been reported on Facebook, almost 97,000 on Instagram, and more than 33,000 on WhatsApp, according to the latest data on DownDetector. (Anadolu)
