Facebook Not Working, So Twitter Fills With Facebook Humor

Yes, Facebook is experiencing performance problems, and it appears to be a widespread issue.

Facebook users can load their page, but are unable to post status updates. It appears to be the most significant performance problem since a 2010 outage in which a configuration change created a feedback loop that overwhelmed a database cluster. UPDATE: As of 10:15 am Eastern time, the problems appear to have been resolved.

When a service with 1.15 billion users is not working, what are users to do? The answer is to shift to Twitter and other social media sites and talk about the fact that Facebook is down. Many users have responded with humor rather than angst or outrage.

Here’s a sampling:

Millions of people across the globe this morning are being forced to have human interaction..oh wait no, there’s still Twitter #facebookdown

— Katie Clark (@KatieBornToRun) October 21, 2013

Facebook is down and it STILL works better than the Obamacare website. #FacebookDown

— Rachel Veronica (@rachelveronica) October 21, 2013

suddenly employers are noticing a surge in productive work on a Monday morning, and wonder why… #facebookdown

— Rachel Ferry (@raradragonfly) October 21, 2013

Hearing reports that #Facebookdown might cost 5.6 Billion dollars in loss to farmville farmers…FEMA contacted.

— Paul Varga (@PVarga) October 21, 2013

As usual, memes are invoked:

Chuck Norris can still log in to Facebook. #facebookdown

— Troll Cat (@2p2TrollCat) October 21, 2013

As is collateral damage:

Not only is @facebook not working, ironically, the page http://t.co/udwkDqUz1f won’t come up either. #facebookdown

— Angela CPAMom (@CPAMom) October 21, 2013