Facebook on the blink for second time in two days

Updated Update (3:56pm Pacific): Facebook has apparently solved the problem that was preventing access to its site. The site appears to be operating normally.

Facebook has acknowledged that at least some users had difficulty accessing its site on Thursday afternoon, a day after the site experienced similar but unrelated problems.

"We’re currently experiencing some site issues causing Facebook to be slow or unavailable for some users," the company said in a statement released to The Reg. "We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”

The statement arrived after The Reg received multiple complaints about the site, and a stories from various news outlets, including Cnet, discussed similar issues.

According to Computer World and web performance outfit AlertSite, Facebook went on the blink around 11:30am Pacific time, and for the next hour it was available to only 38.4 per cent of users. AlertSite also said that Facebook was experiencing problems at all twelve of its monitoring stations across the US.

"Facebook users are roaming the streets in tears, shoving photos of themselves in people's faces and screaming 'DO YOU LIKE THIS? DO YOU??'," TheDollSays on Twitter.

Cnet published a statement from Facebook that seemed to pin the problem on a third-party network provider. But Facebook has told The Reg that this statement addressed a problem that the site experienced yesterday. "We are experiencing an issue with a third party networking provider that is causing problems for some people trying to connect to Facebook," the statement read. "We are in contact with this provider in order to explore what can be done to resolve the issue. In the meantime, we are working on deploying changes to bypass the affected connections."

The company tells us that this third-party network provider problem was resolved. This morning, Facebook also said that it was experiencing "latency issues" with the Facebook API, but these appear to have been resolved as well. ®