Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal Down at the Same Time! (Update)
For those of you addicted to social networking, Thursday morning is starting out pretty rough. The two biggest sites for updating your status - Twitter and Facebook - are both experiencing issues this morning. Twitter's outage started around 9 AM EST today, and while Facebook is up (somewhat), posting updates and wall comments is currently very flaky. And you can't even go vent about how this makes you feel over on your LiveJournal blog because - guess what? - it's down too.
Update: Twitter says they're fighting off a DDOS attack right now but the site is back up. LJ also says they're experiencing a DDOS attack.
According to the Twitter status blog, a posting around 10 AM EST simply reads: "Site is down. We are determining the cause and will provide an update shortly." However, Twitter Search appears to be functional and is somehow pulling in recent tweets, so obviously Twitter has not completely "failwhaled" for everyone.
To make matters worse, Facebook is also experiencing issues this morning, as many rebuffed Twitter users are now finding out when they go to post their status on the social networking site instead. The Facebook outage appears to be intermittent, though, and isn't affecting everyone. If you notice anything at all, it may be only that posting status updates and comments displays an error message. But simply clicking the post button again may force them through (at least that was my experience). The site also loads slowly at times and displays occasional "transport" errors.
Ironically, you can see several complaints on Twitter about this issue right now when doing a Twitter search with the keyword Facebook.
As a last resort, some users may turn to their LiveJournal blogs and attempt to update their mood to "sad" to reflect their feelings about this odd cyber-outage. Unfortunately, they'll be foiled there as well since LJ is down, too.
Some users are already spreading a rumor that this is some sort of social media attack by hackers, but it's more likely just a bizarre coincidence. Maybe the universe just wants us to actually get some work done today.
Update: The Facebook issues may be affecting comments which are integrated with the Facebook Connect system. I just attempted to post a comment here on RWW and it seemed to get stuck when the Facebook Connect window appeared. However, clicking the "X" to close the window allowed the comment go through.
Update 2: LJ came back up around 10:45 EST. Facebook is still flaky and Twitter is still down.
Update 3: Twitter just updated that they're defending themselves against a denial-of-service (DDOS) attack. Could this be the issue for the other sites, too? (10 AM EST)
Update 4: Twitter reports the site is back up, but they are still fighting off the DDOS attack. (approx. 10:55 AM EST). However, despite what the post says, the site is not back up for some people. You can keep tabs on the extent of Twitter's downtime here.
Update 5: Popular Twitter bot Breaking News On has turned to FriendFeed to post updates about this issue.
Update 6: LiveJournal also says they were hit by a DDOS attack.
Update 7: Wow, this is bad. Facebook developers reported a loss of as much as 75% of their traffic today due to timeouts. Check out http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?tab=updates and http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic.php?id=39155 for more details. Facebook also confirmed they were under a DDOS attack.
Share
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
twitter is still down. FB is still acting up. It's a Myspace attack. No doubt about it.
To their credit, the Breaking News account on FriendFeed is providing semi-timely updates on the ongoing Twitter outage: http://friendfeed.com/breakingnewson
http://www.playster.org - We've had intermittent outages all morning. We're on Google's App Engine. If this was a DDoS they may have been targeting Google as well.
i tried to leave a comment, signing in through facebook and i cant even get the site up and its pissing me off
@Playstar: Wow, really? I see that App Engine has had some issues today, too: http://code.google.com/status/appengine
@Erica: When you see the FB Connect window pop-up, hit the "X" - then the comment goes through. (I guess you figured that out though).
Interesting that Facebook and Twitter are under attack.. and yet myspace is doing fine. Me thinks Rupert Murdoch might be behind these outages. In case you don't know, Newscorp owns myspace.
Okay, so we have Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and Google's App Engine getting DDOS'ed. All at the same time FriendFeed reports this http://news.bnonews.com/sqnj.
Anyone else getting that creepy sinking feeling?
the ddosing dudes are probably asking for money now =__=' they are trying to bulldoze the biggest social networking sites, wow.
Facebook seems to be ok, but Twitter keeps timing out which is very aggravating. Guess it's time to take an early lunch. :-)
I can't even get to the login page for either Twitter or Facebook. I'm at work now, so technically it shouldn't bother me... but I'm going crazy! For a while I wondered if it was some kind of hack-attack executed by a social sctivist, haha. I guess I'll just get back to work and cross my fingers.
oops, *activist
It's really outrageous knowing that all social networks are still down.But maybe,this is probably true!
Web Hosting Reviews
DDoS'ing Twitter is like beating up Ralph Wiggum.
What's the world going to do...? i feel like a catastrophic event is occuring...nowhere to post
Headline should read:
"Twitter and Facebook Go Down: People Forced to Actually Work."
LiveJournal maintenance just posted that they were hit by a DDOS attack.
Wonderful World of DDoS
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_maintenance/125027.html
So that's both Twitter and LiveJournal. Now to wait for Facebook's story.
Not only is it affecting Facebooks commenting system, it seems to be affecting their application server. Various applications have not been able to load since the attacks began.
Facebook won't load at all. Big bummer for us addicts!
Facebook, still funky... can't play the Zinga Games either (tied into FB)... they load severely slow and most of the time they time out trying to load.
Very strange. I was able to sign in on FB from here to leave a comment but not directly from my computer. FB app. on i-Phone still seems to be working as well as ever.
Wow... and I thought it was going to be a boring day today!
I heard something that there was supposed to be a 4chan organized attack in September, but maybe they decided to pull an early suprise?
One of my Facebook Profile "Pages" is gone. Hope it's just a glitch with the Facebook problems this morning.
It may be difficult to *defend* against a DDOS attack, but, like rebuilding the economy, we can *all* do our part to prevent them, and one corporation, Microsoft, can do a *lot*. Most DDOS attacks are deployed via botnets. A botnet is a collection of computers, almost always Windows PCs, that have been corrupted with malware and are controlled by people with malicious intent.
What can we all do? If your PC is a Windows PC, enable automatic security updates from Microsoft and install a high-quality Internet protection software package. Norton and McAfee are the two best known ones, but there are probably others. I run McAfee because I got it for free with my Comcast subscription. Enable automatic updates on your Internet protection package as well, and allow the regular scans to be done.
What can Microsoft do? Well, probably a lot, but at a bare minimum, a Windows PC connected to the Internet should check every hour or so with the security update center. If security updates are available, the user should be notified to save their work immediately. Once that's done, the updates should be downloaded and installed and the system rebooted immediately if necessary before *any* other Internet activity is allowed! In short, *mandatory* security updates before surfing, tweeting, chatting, checking the weather or actual productive computer use.
Is that harsh? Maybe ... but voluntary protections aren't working. The botnets are huge and growing. Governments may be able to slow them down, but they spread via unpatched Windows machines, and most users of corrupted PCs have no idea their machine is corrupted.
Good news ..... for me anyways, the "missing" Page has returned and I notice the site response time is back to normal.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Life-of-Luxury/111478482361
Today, 6 August 2009. I live in east coast canada and have't been able to sign into youtube or access the Gmail website since morning and it's 7pm right now.
Is anyone else having a problem with Google today?
Guess what?
Facebook is down again ! It started with the usual problem of applications being slow to open and requests not opening. Then slam ! Facebook is now down.
Clearly issues have not been resolved.
I was punching my keyboard all morning,Now i understand its not my computer's fault heheh
thanks for this Update!
The greatest benefit of Facebook is that it has many groups on the site that you can join. So if you are interested in Chicago Cubs you can research Chicago Cubs in the groups section and you will be able to find friends on there that like the Cubs. This is just one example, I know that you can join groups of your favorite football team, television show, or whatever you want for the most part! If you can't find a group for your interest, you can simply create one!
James
Email Marketing Software
Black ugg boots,cgm, jumbugg, Shepherd's Life in these four legendary brand, first to see her will be ugly and bulky this particular shape of the can not understand, and is a popular of the Eurasian land of boots Now the whole world is blowing in the trend for a while, this gust of mainstream stars in Europe and America is brought about by the.
Ugg Australia sheepskin boots on the history dates back to 1978, and Brian Smith called the young Australian surfer with one member of a group of sheepskin boots to the United States. In the past many years, Australia has been the craftsmen who used to sew the beach in New Zealand sheepskin boots, however, is the business-minded young people with bold and want to try using the traditional products in Australia to the United States.
site: http://www.blackuggboots.net
Last night on Facebook (for the first time ever) I was served up (fake) web pages telling me of possible viral activity and to click on the links on the page to download software to scan my system. I've been using Facebook for over 1 1/2 years and had never received a page like that before, so it appears that the hackers are up to something big.
those hackers did a good job. it really knocked out our access, especially Twitter, and i'm feeling the pinch in followers/traffic as well. i hope the Twitter geeks can come back with a patch!
LJ is down again completely and has been for a large chunk of the day. Heard from the Vancouver Sun that it was European hackers trying to keep one guy from posting. Anyone else wondering how long it's gonna be till the servers are fully functioning?
LJ is still down for me. Completely down for about 12 hours already. Their status report(LiveJournal is up and working) is falsehood.
Lj is still completely down. I can't even get the page to load. It goes directly to the error page. All of my other friends have access. Am I the only one who it won't work for at all???
Well it is clear tat Kremlin is behind this. As during the August 7th 208, Russia invaded Georgia. As many Georgians use Facebook and Live Journal and Twitter it is a coordinated attack to bring down those pages so their opinions are not heard.
Yeah, LJ seems to be down completely, but a friend of mine who lives in Europe says she hasn't been having any problems at all, as have neither of her friends.
for me livejournal is still down.
but for a friend of me who does live in the same country livejournal is working o__O
I really hope they fix livejournal soon because I got layoutwork and mod work to do there -_-
Livejournal has not worked since yesterday afternoon (I am in Ontario, Canada) I know people in B.C. and Conneticut who are able to connect fine but my pages time out each time that I try.
LiveJournal still isn't working. Which is really annoying.
In response to Alice's comment: like your friend, I also live in Europe and LJ hasn't loaded all day. Very irritating!
Just thought I'd add that I live in New York and LJ has not worked for me since yesterday. I'm getting the message "connection interrupted".
Im in the UK and Livejournal hasnt worked for me all day today :( x
Still can't post anything on LJ ;_;
I'm so bored of Livejournal not working
I still can't even load LJ at all.
Lj is down for me as well. I'm in Greece, have no idea about my other friends. It was up until 5 hours ago.
I'm in Ohio, and I still can't use LJ. I have a paid account, and I want to know whether or not they have a plan to fix this problem.
I have a paid account as well, and would really like an extension if this problem isn't fixed soon.
Many of my friends on twitter have LJ as well and they seem to be able to log in and out.
and now we even can get online there with a proxy..
XDD...
I'm in South Dakota, and LJ's been down since early yesterday morning. Keeps giving me 'network timeout' errors. Hope this gets sorted out soon.
1 2 Next