The past week for Facebook has been a relatively calm one, aside for the service interruption that has been affecting an unknown number of users. Given that I was hosting a conference on Monday, we were fairly slow with the updates last week. However, we’re back on schedule and updating as usual. Also included in this week’s article is our regularly posted “This Week In Facebook” video produced by Megan O’Neill (who you can follow here).
Hitwise Releasees Data That Facebook’s U.S. Traffic Has Tripled
Last week I posted about new Hitwise data which showed Facebook’s domestic traffic tripling over the past year. It was at the expense of MySpace who’s traffic was down a whopping 50 percent. Also included in the report was data that showed Twitter traffic up over 1,100 percent. It’s not surprising considering all the buzz about the company recently. However Twitter still has a very long way to go before it’s as large as Facebook.
Facebook Lite Released In Multiple Languages
Earlier in the week, Facebook officially launched support for Facebook Lite in 70 languages. The new languages were provided by Facebook’s extremely successful “Translations” application which crowd-sources the entire translations process. With Facebook Lite serving as the fast loading version of Facebook, translating the application was important so that users from around the world could begin to access it.
Facebook Is Down For Unknown Number Of Users
For the past week Facebook has been down for an unknown number of users. On Saturday we posted about the incident and quickly received a large volume of comments about the issue. We’ve also received a number of reports from friends and readers about accounts which are currently inaccessible. This is a big deal for Facebook as they’ve been extremely reliable even while experiencing rapid growth.
Facebook Releases The Gross National Happiness
Earlier in the week, Facebook released their Gross National Happiness Index, which measures the level of happiness among U.S. Facebook users. The information is compiled using sentiment analysis of Facebook users from across the site. The happiest times of the year appear to be major U.S. holidays, including Thanksgiving which appears to set happiness records every year!
I'm really glad I happened upon your site. The first article read (this one) was interesting & well written.
I hear many people complaining about Facebook's erratic functionality–myself included. I can just imagine the stress their web developers must be under to get things fixed. When I think of the complexity of this site, it's amazing what programmers can do
Comment by Joanne Glasspoole — October 11, 2009 @ 9:51 pm
All I know is that this frickin glitch has affected me personally as well as my friends. It has been extremely annoying and leaving me feeling disconnected from society. I would think that such a site would have a more efficient way fixing this and quickly. Unfortunately it has yet to be fixed. I can imagine a site that has such a huge volume of traffic would run into some occasional problems but this is unheard of. It seriously needs to be fixed and soon. I know that this is a widespead problem and should be fixed yesterday.
Comment by reina — October 11, 2009 @ 10:54 pm
If you know that the site being down is affecting so many users, why isn't Facebook providing any kind of updates as to the status of the issue?
Comment by Katie — October 12, 2009 @ 11:17 am
This is one seriously unhappy (un)user of Facebook.. I have been locked out for eight days now.. seems like forever! Especially when you log on daily to keep in touch. I am deployed overseas with my family and have to use my husband's log in to get any news.. I can't believe that this is just some minor glitch.. there has to be another explaination..Not that they are bothering to give us any real explaination or updates.. I doubt I will ever see my account again… :-{
Comment by CA — October 12, 2009 @ 11:40 am
What has happened to my Home page?
WHY are all of my groups totally taking over my feed? I want to know what my friends are doing on a regular basis and IF I want to know what a group has done, I will simply click on "Groups".
I do not like an application that determines what I "need" to see on my feed. Let me determine that … after all, I'm pretty sure I know me a little bit better than Facebook does.
Oh and where are my friends and why does Facebook act as though I am a first time user for the last 2 days?
Inbox is totally useless and I can't access my Requests, much less, accept any of them.
None of my friend lists show that I have any friends.
What is going on and when is it going to stop? This is totally frustrating to me.
Chat shows that I have over a 100 friends online at this very moment, yet when I try to chat with them, I get a message saying I have to be friends with them?
I saw on a "Google" search earlier today that random users are being used to rollout a variety of interfaces, well … if I'm one of those Random users, I would like to not be one of them and I would also suggest to Facebook that they recruit BETA testers instead of just having their users show up to find their Facebook world totally turned upside down.
I want my friends back. I want my gifts that have been waiting for 2 days to be accepted. I want to accept my new friend requests. I want it back to like it was prior to 1:00 est on Wednesday, October 14, 2009.
Comment by KB — October 15, 2009 @ 1:08 pm
Yeah, it sucks that Facebook is down, but let's get real people. If you don't have a social life without Facebook, then Facebook has caused a problem. It's probably good for some of you, it requires you to actually talk to people instead of send them messages. You don't pay for this service, they don't owe you anything. I'm sure this isn't going to be permanent, so hang on there for a while, and maybe get out of the house.
Comment by Dan — October 16, 2009 @ 10:50 pm
It’s not the “becoming addicted” to facebook, but it is the hundreds of family pictures that I have stored, being assured that they wont be compromised would be a great step.
Comment by Steve — October 19, 2009 @ 11:54 am
Twice I have signed up for facebook only to get frustrated. I can see and talk with friends, etc. but have not been able to get into any games.
Comment by sharon — February 21, 2010 @ 11:39 am