Facebook server tweaks led to massive outage

San Francisco - The outage affected users for some 12 hours in most areas of the world, with the biggest impact in North America and Europe.

Facebook blamed a "server configuration change" on Thursday for a massive outage affecting its applications around the world and brought fresh attention to the embattled social networking leader.
The outage affected users for some 12 hours in most areas of the world, with the biggest impact in North America and Europe, according to the tracking website downdetector.com.
After acknowledging the problem on Wednesday, Facebook remained mum on the issue for nearly 24 hours before issuing an explanation and apology around 1630 GMT on Thursday.
"Yesterday, as a result of a server configuration change, many people had trouble accessing our apps and services," a Facebook tweet said. "We've now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering. We're very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone's patience." The outage was believed to be the worst ever for the internet giant that reaches an estimated 2.7 billion people with its core social network, Instagram and messaging applications.
On Wednesday, Facebook said the situation did not appear to be the result of a denial-of-service attack. The hashtag #FacebookDown was a popular theme on Twitter. In some cases, the apps could be accessed but would not load posts or handle messages.
In November, a Facebook outage was attributed to a server problem, and a September disruption was said to be the result of "networking issues."