For any Facebook developer, platform downtime is a fact of life. While Facebook has built a relatively stable platform, there are many occasions where it goes down for a period of time. For developers this can be extremely difficult as they don’t know if there’s a bug in the code, a server issue, or simply that Facebook isn’t working properly. That’s why Facebook launched the new Platform Live Status page yesterday. The service lets developers check whether or not any issues are on their end or on Facebook’s end.

The Platform Status page provides developers with three new pieces of information: the current status of the platform, the average API response time, and the platform error count. While Facebook isn’t providing metrics which show the actual volume of errors as well as the response time (which I’d assume would be in milliseconds), the charts will let developers know if there is anything taking place which is out of the ordinary.

Facebook clearly is dedicated to making the Facebook Platform as stable of an environment as possible for developers. The new Facebook Platform Live status is a step in that direction. Rather than pulling out your hair as users start complaining that they can’t access your application, you’ll now know that it’s Facebook’s fault, not yours! Over the next six months there will be big changes for developers and the last thing developers need at this point is a lack of transparency which this tool helps provide.