They're Back - Facebook, Whatsapp And Instagram Return After Outage

Social media giants Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are back fully operational after a blackout that lasted around six hours, Facebook says.

It announced the problem was an internal technical issue which also had dire affects on many of the staff, including email issues and passes not working. The outage is said to be the biggest in the companies history, with the channels being down from about 16:00 GMT until around 22:00 on Monday.

However, the organization said there was "no evidence that user data was compromised".

Downdetector, a site that tracks website outages, said around 10.6 million problem reports around the world were logged. Although the real number of people affected is most definitely much higher, with estimates suggesting over 3.5 billion people that use Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and Whatsapp were left scrambling for other ways to entertain themselves.

What did Zuckerberg have to say?

Fortunately for its creator, his net worth was still estimated to be $121.6 billion.

However Facebook’s stocks were down by 5%, according to reports, following the hit to its services that also affected WhatsApp and Instagram. Last quarter it brought in around $330 million a day in sales so will have lost many tens of millions in revenue.