Facebook temporarily shuts down for some users

Technical issues knock out the social network for a few hours, spawn numerous Twitter jokes

By Christopher Hickey

Published September 23, 2010 9:10PM (EDT)

FILE In this Wednesday, July 23, 2008 file photograph, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, introduces Facebook Connect at a developer conference in San Francisco. On Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2010, several media outlets reported that Zuckerberg is going to donate $100 million to Newak's public school system, which has has some of state's lowest test scores and poorest graduation rates. On Oprah Winfrey's Chicago-based syndicated television show Friday, Sept. 24, 2010, Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Republican Gov. Chris Christie and Facebook founder Zuckerberg are expected to announce the donation. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, file) (AP)
FILE In this Wednesday, July 23, 2008 file photograph, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, introduces Facebook Connect at a developer conference in San Francisco. On Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2010, several media outlets reported that Zuckerberg is going to donate $100 million to Newak's public school system, which has has some of state's lowest test scores and poorest graduation rates. On Oprah Winfrey's Chicago-based syndicated television show Friday, Sept. 24, 2010, Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Republican Gov. Chris Christie and Facebook founder Zuckerberg are expected to announce the donation. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, file) (AP)

If any of you have tried procrastinating from work to check your news feeds earlier today, you probably noticed something strange: Facebook no longer loads. It's not just you. Facebook shut down for people everywhere earlier today, leaving users unable to log on and a "Service Unavailable -- DNS Failure" message on their newly poke-less computer screens. Apparently being richer than Steve Jobs and an unusually generous donation wasn't enough exciting news for one day for founder Mark Zuckerberg. 

Naturally, the Twitterverse exploded, providing an opportunity for amateur comedians everywhere to practice their Facebook and Zuckerberg jokes. CNET questions whether an outage at Qwest, an Internet service provider, earlier today, could have been related to the problem. Kotaku covers the panicked reaction of FarmVille users who survived "the drought of September 23, 2010."

But thankfully, service was finally restored. Kinda makes you want to watch this movie even more, doesn't it?: 


By Christopher Hickey

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