Facebook Status History as of 11:30am ET

Leave a comment below to let us know your experience, and be sure to file a report and stay tuned to our Facebook status page for the latest information.  We haven’t noticed any official acknowledgement from Facebook so far but we’ll update this post with any additional details we come across.

Update: As of 11:45am ET, Facebook’s performance seems to be returning to normal for most users.  The cause of the earlier disruption is still unknown.

Windows Live Hotmail Status History as of 4:00pm ET

Microsoft finally acknowledged the issue nearly 3 hours later and announced that the problem should be resolved.  We’ve continued to see sporadic user complaints throughout the day, so be sure to file a report if you’re still experiencing trouble and stay tuned to our Hotmail status page for the latest information.

Update: MSNBC (fittingly) offers additional details about the disruption:

Some users were seeing this message when they tried to log into their accounts: “We are experiencing higher than normal volume and are therefore unable to service your request at this time” and are told to try clicking “refresh” in the Web browser, clicking on a “back” arrow and trying again, or “wait a few minutes and try again.” None of those options seemed to be working.

We’ve griped before about Facebook’s tight-lipped attitude during past outages, but high-profile incidents this year (and some resulting critical news stories) may have helped inspire a more open philosophy.  The company’s new Facebook Platform Live Status page, announced on October 29th, shows the current status of the Facebook Platform and lists recent incidents with an indicator of severity (yellow or red).  Automatic updates are available through an RSS feed or email notifications.  Elsewhere on the page, graphs show the API response time and error count and known bugs are listed according to developer votes.  Although this information is aimed at developers of Facebook apps and pages, platform errors often impact regular Facebook users who attempt to use an affected app.

Blogger has historically been more forthcoming about software bugs and service problems, although updates are split between 2 different blogs: Blogger Status and Known Issues for Blogger.  While this confusing distinction will remain for the time being, the blog service pledged on November 4th to improve its communication practices during an outage:

Going forward, in the case of significant service interruptions, we plan to publish a post mortem on the Blogger Status blog within 3 business days to provide details about what went wrong and what we’re doing to help prevent similar problems in the future.

We have updated our Facebook status page and Blogger status page to reflect these changes, and downrightnow will automatically show you official announcements as soon as they’re posted.

Companies that communicate well during a service disruption reap several benefits: they put users at ease, eliminate confusion and redundant customer support inquiries, and send a signal that the company is on top of the situation (even if they are still troubleshooting).  In contrast, companies that are slow to acknowledge issues can risk aggravating their most passionate and vocal users and opening the door to unwanted speculation about the cause of the problem and the company’s ability to respond.  Congrats to both Facebook and Blogger for improving their efforts at communication.

On a related note, Twitter has rolled out its Lists feature to all users.  We’ve created an “official announcements” list that includes the official Twitter feeds for the services monitored at downrightnow.  You can find the list on the right side of our Twitter page where you’ll have the option to become a follower.  Although many companies use their Twitter accounts for general purposes in addition to outage news, you can use the list to check quickly for official company updates.

downrightnow detected a continual spike in user reports around 10am ET; Twitter first acknowledged the widespread issue through its Twitter API feed at approximately 1pm.

Twitter Status History as of 3:00pm ET

We also observed numerous complaints of capacity errors yesterday (10/20/09), possibly due in part to competition over religion-related trending topics.

Stay tuned to the Twitter status page on downrightnow for the latest updates, and be sure to let us know if you receive a visit from the Fail Whale.

Facebook Status History as of 10:10am ET

Facebook has not yet officially acknowledged a problem.  If you’re experiencing the issue, be sure to file a report and stay tuned to our Facebook status page for the latest information.

Twitter Search Results as of 10:10am ET

Users complained of a similar Facebook disruption for several hours on Sunday, September 27.

Update: It looks like today’s Facebook issues are primarily affecting users in the UK.

Update II: Some UK users have reported confirmation from BT Internet of a known network issue.

Twitter Search Results as of 5:00pm ET

Facebook Status History as of 5:00pm ET

Facebook has announced that it is aware of a network issue on its developers platform updates page:

Network issues
Sep 14, 2009 12:17pm

We’re currently experiencing network issues which are creating latency on Platform. We’re working on a resolution. We’ll update again in two hours or when the issue is resolved.

Stay tuned to the Facebook status page on downrightnow for the latest updates.  If you are having trouble with Facebook, be sure to file a report to help spread the word!

Facebook Status History as of 2:45pm ET (7:45pm BST)

We haven’t seen any official acknowledgements from Facebook or Virgin Media, but as always, keep an eye on our Facebook service status page for the latest status information.

As far as we can tell, today’s Facebook issues aren’t affecting a large number of users outside the UK.

Update: Twitter user @ollieparsley found Virgin Media’s official announcement of today’s network trouble.

Facebook Status History as of Noon ET

As we’ve noted before, Facebook is not exactly forthcoming about service disruptions compared to other web services (like Twitter and Gmail) that maintain an official service status web site.  Thanks to everyone who has been reporting the issue for helping to confirm that this isn’t an isolated problem.

If you’re having trouble with Facebook today, be sure to file a report and help spread the word.

First to fall was LiveJournal, which began reporting database problems on the LiveJournal Status page at 8:58 am ET; downrightnow immediately picked up the announcement.  Kudos to LJ for acknowledging the issue and keeping users informed.

User reports of Twitter trouble started at 9:07 am and downrightnow immediately reported a possible outage.  By 9:36 am, we were receiving even more reports and upgraded our evaluation to a likely service disruption. At 9:40 am, TechCrunch picked up the story.  It wasn’t until approximately 9:55 am that Twitter posted its first official announcement, saying:

We are determining the cause and will provide an update shortly.

Another official update followed at around 11:00 am that broke the news: Twitter had identified a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.  We wish Twitter good luck in dealing with the attack and their announcements are definitely appreciated.  For those keeping score, we will also point out that downrightnow users were notified of potential service trouble 30 minutes before it was widely reported by TechCrunch, and 45 minutes before Twitter itself acknowledged the issue.  Thanks to everyone who submitted a report!

Finally, our outage-weary users also began complaining of trouble at Facebook by 10:35 am.  We reported a temporary service disruption and have continued to monitor the social network’s status as intermittent user reports have continued to flow in, both from downrightnow users and on Twitter (which now appears mostly recovered).  Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t provide official announcements or updates on service issues, so its users are left in the dark (those who aren’t downrightnow users, that is).  We hope Facebook will follow the lead of other services such as LiveJournal and Twitter who communicate with their users during service trouble.  Until then, we’ll continue to keep you updated with the best information available.

As always, you can keep an eye on these services and others all in one place at downrightnow.com.

Update: According to Mashable, Facebook and LiveJournal have also confirmed that DDoS attacks are contributing to their service disruptions today.  Though it’s not clear whether the same attackers are behind all 3 incidents, the timing does raise suspicion.  Rumors that downrightnow commissioned the onslaught in order to boost traffic are entirely unsubstantiated. :)