Facebook Offers Statement About Site Outage

Earlier today, Facebook users experienced a site outage for about 20 minutes. The issue didn't affect mobile users, with smartphone and tablet access remaining unaffected. This issue originated after Google users were also affected by outages, prompting curiosity about whether the two issues were related. Turns out, Facebook was just tinkering.

The issue caused a bit of confusion at first, with some Facebook users reporting that the social network worked fine, and with others reporting that it couldn't be accessed. It didn't take long for users to realize that the mobile version of the site was working, but that attempting to access Facebook via a desktop browser resulted in an error. Less than half an hour later, all was well again.

A Facebook spokesperson offered this statement to Business Insider. "Earlier today we made a change to our DNS infrastructure and that change resulted in some people being temporarily unable to reach the site. We detected and resolved the issue quickly, and we are now back to 100 percent. We apologize for any inconvenience."

This came after Gmail users awoke to find their email down, an issue entirely unrelated to the Facebook outage. The problem seemed to persist for certain users for about 40 minutes before being corrected. Google issued this statement at 12:10 PST: "The problem with Google Mail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support."

[via Business Insider]