Facebook suffers outage affecting users worldwide
By YOUKYUNG LEE, Associated Press
Jan 27, 2015 2:17 AM CST
File- This May 16, 2012, file photo shows a Facebook logo displayed on the screen of an iPad in New York. Social media websites Facebook and Instagram have stopped working Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015. The problem is affecting users in Australia but also in other countries including the United States. (AP...   (Associated Press)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Facebook suffered a widespread outage lasting an hour on Tuesday affecting users worldwide.

The glitch reported in Asia, the United States, Australia and the U.K. affected access from PCs and Facebook's mobile app. The social media giant's Instagram service was also inaccessible.

On its website for developers, Facebook said the "major outage" lasted one hour. It said its engineers had identified the cause but did not elaborate.

Facebook has about 1.35 billion active users and Instagram has some 300 million.

News of the Facebook outage set rival social network Twitter alight, propelling the hashtag "facebookdown" to top trend on the site. It comes ahead of Facebook reporting its quarterly earnings on Wednesday.

As access to Facebook returned, some users in Asia reported that the site was loading slowly or not offering full functionality.

The temporary loss of service may be Facebook's biggest outage since Sept. 24, 2010 when it was down for about 2.5 hours.

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