Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram are down as the Facebook data centre crashes

Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are all down on this Monday evening.

Users of Facebook’s suite of social media platforms are all non-responsive as millions of users try to access their accounts. Users on mobile, desktop and tablets are all affected.

Issues started around 22:44 Thai Time and are currently impacting users worldwide with the hashtag #facebookdown trending on Twitter.

We’re sure Mr Zuckerberg and his team will be working tirelessly to bring the servers back online. In the meantime, you can always access The Thaiger for updates on the latest news out of Thailand.

Big losses for Facebook shareholders

With so many businesses relying on Facebook’s services, it’s estimated that for the few hours they’ve been offline, it will have cost the global economy an estimated $160m USD and counting.

The actual share price has taken a hit too, with losses currently around the 5% mark.

Twitter makes light of the situation

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Facebook rival, Twitter, couldn’t resist making fun of the situation when it was suggested the facebook.com domain could be up for sale.

What’s this Border Gateway Protocol thing?

For short, BGP is the routing protocol for the Internet. Just like the post office processing mail, BGP picks the most efficient routes for delivering Internet traffic.

According to internet security experts, “Today, the directions for how to get to Facebook’s DNS server’s addresses weren’t available (and seem to still be unavailable). Without being able to contact the DNS servers, visitors trying to reach a Facebook property, like facebook.com, will not get an answer and so the page won’t load.”

SOURCE: Daily Mail