This Monday, Facebook and some of its online properties, including Instagram and WhatsApp, experienced a worldwide outage, leaving users unable to access the company's various platforms and services.
"The social network and its apps began displaying error messages before noon Eastern time, users reported. All of the company's family of apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger — showed outage reports, according to the site downdetector.com, which monitors web traffic and site activity," The New York Times reported.
"Outages are not uncommon for apps, but to have so many interconnected apps at the world's largest social media company go down at the same time is rare. The company has been trying to integrate the underlying technical infrastructure of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram for several years," the Times' report stated.
According to Times reporter Sheera Frenkel, even the company's employees' security badges weren't working, reportedly leaving them unable to access their workspaces.
"Was just on phone with someone who works for FB who described employees unable to enter buildings this morning to begin to evaluate extent of outage because their badges weren't working to access doors," she tweeted.