Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp go down simultaneously

Facebook is down with its key features unavailable for some users globally for the last 8 hours. The magnitude of the outage is bigger and more people are affected this time than ever before. Other than Facebook, the company's messaging app WhatsApp and photo-sharing site Instagram were also affected.

"Facebook is down for required maintenance right now, but you should be able to get back on within a few minutes. In the meantime, read more about why you're seeing this message. Thanks for your patience as we improve the site," a message on the website read.

Facebook users were able to load the main app but were unable to post anything. Similarly, the Instagram users were not able to refresh their feed or post anything new. Messengers desktop version too was not loading, however the mobile app is working fine. Similar issues were noticed with WhatsApp, where the users were unable to send images. The issue also affected Workplace, an enterprise connectivity platform developed by Facebook. Oculus, a VR company owned by Facebook, also reported that its users were having difficulty in accessing and using its platform.

The outage affected users in the US, Europe, South America, Australia and Asia, according to a map by Down Detector.

On Twitter, hashtags #FacebookDown and #InstagramDown have been used more than 150,000 times so far.

Instagram, it seems, is back up after suffering a partial outage for over several hour.

Earlier, Google suffered a similar outage and users were unable to access services like Google Drive, Hangouts etc.