Facebook Saves Face, Glitch Resolved

Sept. 23, 2010 — -- Facebook fans, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Your beloved social networking site is coming back online.

The latest explanation from the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is that the site is slowly returning to service.

"Today we experienced technical difficulties causing the site to be unavailable for a number of users. The issue has been resolved and everyone should now have access to Facebook. We apologize for any inconvenience," the company said in a statement.

Engineers are still working on the problem, but say they do not believe a virus or cyber attack was behind the issue that made the website unaccessible and slow for users Thursday afternoon.

Earlier today, Facebook confirmed, for the second time in two days, that it was having problems with its site. As a result, some Facebook members said the site was slow, others said they couldn't access the Web site at all.

Yesterday, Facebook went down because of an issue with a third-party networking provider, Mashable reported.

The cause of today's problem has not yet been disclosed but the technology blog TechCrunch noted that the issue also affected Facebook's "Like" button that lives on Web sites across the Internet. TechCrunch reported that Facebook Connect and Facebook Platform have also been affected.

Bemoaning the temporary loss of their trusty social network, Facebook users took to Twitter to (sometimes sarcastically) tweet their complaints.

"In the absence of Facebook, I will now be "thumbs-upping" the hilarious stuff my husband says in real life," said one tweeter.