Facebook blames 'server configuration change' for its longest outage ever

Facebook blames 'server configuration change' for its longest outage ever

Key Point

• Facebook experienced worldwide outages for its apps and services, around noon Eastern Wednesday.
• On Thursday, Facebook blamed a "server configuration change" for the outages.
• Facebook said services were returning to normal Thursday.

Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer and founder of Facebook Inc. Attends the Viva Tech start-up and technology gathering at Parc des Expositions Porte de Versailles on May 24, 2018, in Paris, France.

Facebook blames 'server configuration change' for its longest outage ever

Facebook users around the world reported issues logging in and posting on the site as well as on Instagram and WhatsApp throughout the day on Wednesday. The outage lasted about a full day and was Facebook's longest downtime ever.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Thursday the company blamed a "server configuration change" for the outages. The company said its services were coming back online.

"Yesterday, as a result of a server configuration change, many people had trouble accessing our apps and services," the statement said. "We have now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering. We are very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone's patience. "

Facebook acknowledged the outage in a tweet Wednesday, saying, "We're aware that some people are currently experiencing access to the Facebook family of apps. We're working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. "

It was later confirmed to be the result of a DDoS attack, which refers to a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack in a hacker overwhelms.

Facebook shares are relatively unchanged Wednesday afternoon but slid about 1.8 percent Thursday morning.

Reports of problems with Facebook peaked at over 12,000 worldwide late Wednesday, according to Downdetector, a website where users can report problems on apps and websites. Downdetector listed over 300 reports Thursday morning, and many people reported their access was restored, but Facebook has not yet confirmed the issues resolved.

Users reported a variety of problems, from being unable to load the site Facebook users posted screenshots on Twitter showing error messages when they tried to load the app. When loading the site, some users' got a message on the screen saying "Account Temporarily Unavailable."

At a Facebook event at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas Wednesday, the company's head of video products cracked a joke when he ran into technical issues.

"Today is the technical difficulties for Facebook, I guess," cracked Paresh Rajwat, in a reference to the company's worldwide service outage. Rajwat was announcing new features for Facebook's Watch video service.

Technical issues with Facebook has historically posed serious problems for advertisers who use platforms and even other websites.

Facebook already experienced an outage of its tool for advertisers in November at a time when marketers were trying to place ads for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

In 2013, Facebook experienced a glitch which took a lot of websites down there with its login feature across the internet. When users tried to log in a website with their Facebook profile, they were directed to a Facebook error page, Business Insider reported at the time. The glitch, which only lasted a few minutes, affected websites including The New York Times and CNN, Business Insider reported