Facebook has gone down for a short time, offering the world
a short but horrific glimpse of what life would look like without the social
networking giant.
Millions of users were on their PCs / Laptops but unable to
log on to the website for about 20 minutes around 11am (AEST) on Wednesday and
received error messages on Facebook's launch page.
"Sorry, something went wrong," one of the firm's
missives read.
People in the US, South America and Europe all reported
being unable to access the website, though it appeared not all users
experienced difficulties.
Some took to rival networking site Twitter to giggle at the
predicament.
Others appeared genuinely panicked at the prospect of not
being able to upload pictures of their breakfast and poke their mates.
It remains unclear why Facebook went down.
Messages posted online, purportedly linked to the hacking
collective Anonymous, claimed responsibility for attacking the site.
But it could not immediately verify the claim and it would
appear an unlikely scenario.
Facebook representatives in Australia have been contacted
for comment.
If it was attacked, and it's a big `if', one possible motive
could be the social network recently becoming embroiled in the US National
Security Administration PRISM data-mining scandal.
The company also announced on Wednesday that it has passed a
major milestone in its development, with more than one million advertisers now
using the site.
