On Thursday of last week, September 23rd, Facebook went offline for around two and a half hours. According to CNN.com, this outage was the longest in Facebook history, cause by a problem with the network's ability to fix an error. The CNN article explained, "On Facebook's blog for developers, a post Thursday had said the site was 'experiencing latency issues,' or a time delay, with its platform. In layman's terms, what Johnson described was a situation in which a problem popped up and lots of different parts of Facebook's system tried to fix it at the same time." This problem forced workers to shut down Facebook for millions of users.
With Facebook being offline, people needed to find a way to communicate that Facebook was offline. So instead of updating their Facebook status they tweeted. CNN reported on example, "Somebody needs to fix Facebook ASAP. I don't like having to tweet to show that I 'like' all the stories about it being down." A blog on MSNBC.com showcased more humorous and sarcastic tweets about the outage. One of my favorites from the blog was, "@kevinism: 'Facebook is down. Expect a huge spike of births in nine months.'"
It is scary to think that some people were so freaked out about Facebook being down for two hours. I don't even want to imagine how badly people would react (myself included) if it was for two days. I'm not going to lie, when Facebook was out I tweeted about it. It's sad that I have the inability to completely unplug myself from all social networks, but I think it's just the way our generation has grown up because I am obviously not alone. Another tweet from the MSNBC blog said, "@vvvCARLAvvv: 'Facebook was down for 4 hours & ppl are reacting as if its apocalypse. You can still go outside & suck in air (expletive deleted)! Jesus! Unplug for a sec.'" I think it's funny that this person would advise other people to unplug when they have clearly not.
Overall I think freaking out over Facebook being offline for two hours is a little ridiculous. However, I understand how people could feel disconnected. Facebook is something that I expect to always be there. I expect to be able to get on to Facebook when I want to procrastinate my homework, when I don't want to pay attention in class, or when I'm just bored. Facebook has become something people rely on, and that isn't necessarily a good thing.
If people freak out about facebook being down, then you have to think what has this world come to. I would have to agree if facebook is down for two hours its not the end of your life. Go outside and do something, its rare these days to find people outside enjoying the non internet crap.
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