Facebook and Instagram outage around the world

Facebook, Messenger and Instagram have been down. Photo / AP file

Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp users were in a frenzy after many attempted to log in today only to find that the sites were down.

The outage appears to have affected users around the world, with thousands of reports within the first hour.

Users took to Twitter to express their grief about the issue, which seems to have crashed both the mobile application and the desktop version, according to the Daily Mail.

A live map shows Facebook outage hotspots across the United States, with the northeast hit particularly hard. Facebook also appears to be down for users in Europe

According to Down Detector, the outage appears to have started around 4.48 pm US eastern time.

By around 7pm (UEST), most of the problems appeared to have been resolved.

Users reported having issues logging into the service, posting comments and viewing photos.

As a result, Facebook-owned apps like Messenger and WhatsApp appeared to have also been hit by the outage, albeit there being fewer user reports on Down Detector.

Facebook showed an error message for some users on its site that read: "Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue.

"We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes."

Another read: "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on getting this fixed as soon as we can."

Some users claimed that Facebook was down due to maintenance, but it's unclear if that's the cause.

Instagram's website displayed a similar message: "We couldn't connect to Instagram. Make sure you're connected to the internet and try again."

WhatsApp users said they could neither send nor receive messages on the app.

Many tried to restart their apps, or delete and re-download them, but continued to experience the same issues.

On Twitter, many users checked in to see if the problem was affecting others.

"Facebook and Instagram are down, the one time of the year I actually get on Twitter...because I don't know what else to do with my life," user tweeted.

Another said: "Anyone else having trouble with Facebook today? I've been trying for the past 20 minutes and can't get on."

On Facebook, about 38 percent of users reported experiencing a "total blackout," while 42 percent of Instagram users said they could log in, but couldn't access the app's News Feed.

The majority of WhatsApp issues appeared to be connection-related. Approximately 40% of Messenger users said they couldn't access the app due to server issues.