Facebook experiencing slowness, outages

Facebook is experiencing a widespread outage, and slowness

 on the site for those who can access it, according to reports.

The social networking site had problems also on Wednesday,

 when some users reported difficulties, but Thursday's outage 

appears to be more widespread.

"We’re currently experiencing some site issues causing
 Facebook

 to be slow or unavailable for some users," a Facebook 

spokesperson toldl msnbc.com at 5 p.m. ET. "We are
working to

 resolve this issue as quickly as possible."

The spokesperson also said Thursday's problems "are
 unrelated to

 yesterday’s issues."

Facebook has more than 500 million users worldwide,
and some of

 them are turning to Twitter, the microblogging site,
to share news 

of the outage.

"Facebook is down. Worker productivity rises. U.S.
climbs out 

of recession" was among the tweets posted Thursday
afternoon ET.

"Facebook is down. Life is over. Thank goodness
we've got Twitter!" 

tweeted "KristinNBennett."

Among the comments, below, on this blog: Delean Bindle,
 who wrote:

 "I can't get on either. I get the same message, Internet
 server is down.

 Yesterday and earlier today I kept having to refresh the
page or game, 

all the time," and from "Momskie": "Hope it comes
back on ... im in

 missions in mexico & stay in touch with family
 this way....guess GOd

 will turn it back on when He gets ready...hopefully soon.."

The Associated Press reported that in addition to
U.S. Facebook users,

 those in Europe and South America also are experiencing
 problems.

Another person, posting here, Vicki B-2408394, said
 with Facebook's 

"upgrade" to the site yesterday, "Typically, when they
have done changes

 to the site, there have been glitches for up to a week
 following the upgrades.

"With the amount of users on the site, this becomes
rather frustrating,

 as many have gone to using it as their primary mode
of quickly 

disseminating information. It is also used by many
as a gaming platform 

to launch many on-line games. Slowness was noted by
 many this morning, 

as the site was taking longer than usual to reload pages.
 About an hour ago,

 there was no access to the site at all."

Mashable, which covers social media, noted that
 "On our end when we

 attempt to access Facebook, we’re seeing the message
: 'Internal Server 

Error — The server encountered an internal error
or misconfiguration 

and was unable to complete your request.' Facebook
 'Like' buttons also 

appear to be down on our site and across the Web."

Facebook was severely crippled, the site slowed to
a crawl, in August 2009,

 at the same time Twitter suffered a complete outage.
Both sites were 

victims of a denial-of-service attack, in which hackers
take control of a 

massive number of computers and aim to inundate the
 site with traffic, 

preventing legitimate users from getting through.

At that time, the Associated Press noted: "The attack
 was targeted at a 

blogger who goes by 'Cyxymu' — the name of a town
 in Georgia —

 on several Web sites, including Twitter, Facebook and
 LiveJournal."

It is too soon to say whether a similar problem is happening
 today.

 But both Facebook and Twitter have had problems this
 week. On 

Tuesday, Twitter was struck by a hack which resulted in
strange tweets

 of blocked-out text propagating themselves, causing
popup 

windows to open.

As reported then: "Twitter said in a blog post the
 problem was caused 

by "cross-site scripting," which allowed users to run
JavaScript programs 

on others' computers, turning tweets different colors
or causing the

 pop-up boxes to appear. Some users, Twitter added,
 took things a 

step further and included code that got people's accounts
 to re-tweet

 the messages without their knowledge."

http://technolog.msnbc.

By Suzanne Choney