Facebook ripe for ridicule as it suffers outage a day after IPO filing

Social networkers resorted to Twitter during and following a brief Facebook outage on Thursday, a day after the company filed for its initial public offering.

Social networkers resorted to Twitter during and following a brief Facebook outage on Thursday, a day after the company filed for its initial public offering.

BACKGROUND: What Facebook’s IPO means for users 

Some users (including me) were briefly unable to reach Facebook (for work purposes), while others noted slow loading pages. 

Some consulted sites such as DownForEveryoneOrJustMe to confirm that the Facebook outage wasn’t just them, and it wasn’t.

Speculation swirled that hacking group Anonymous, which recently threatened to “kill” Facebook, was behind the outage. But while various Anonymous-related Twitter accounts took note of the outage, they claimed no responsibility for it.

Others joked that productivity skyrocketed during the outage. 

Twitter comments included:

@Schindizzle Facebook's been down for 15 minutes and I'm freaking out because I don't know if anyone's having babies, eating food, eating babies, etc. :(

@crapules THIS IS NOT AN EXERCISE! FACEBOOK DOWN!! I REPEAT!! FACEBOOK DOWN! PLEASE STAY CALM AND PROCRASTINATE ELSEWHERE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

@jasonhiner: I would have never noticed the brief blip of a Facebook outage if people hadn't mentioned it on Twitter. #irony

@brianstucki Facebook is offline. Somewhere, Zuck is walking around a pool screaming, "We're Facebook! Facebook doesn't go down!"

@someecards: I was going to wish you a happy birthday but Facebook was down.

No word yet from Facebook on the outage, but then again, maybe they’re in their pre-IPO quiet period…

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