UPDATE 3:45 p.m.: TechCrunch reported that the Facebook outage lasted about 15 minutes. CNET has promised updates.
UPDATE 3:25 p.m.: It's been a tough day for tech giants. First Gmail went down this morning, then Facebook users began reporting outages on that site at about 2:45 p.m.
Facebook's outage sparked its own flood of memorable Tweets.
For the first 5 minutes Facebook was down, it was kind of funny. Minutes 6-10 were when I built the barricades and checked the fresh water.
— Brock Wilbur (@brockwilbur) December 10, 2012
FACEBOOK IS DOWN PLEASE EXIT THE INTERNET IN A CALM AND ORDERLY FASHION
— John Merriman (@jmerriman) December 10, 2012
Facebook being down has prompted hundreds of parents to rush out and push photographs of their children through strangers' letterboxes.
— Dave Jones (@welsh_gas_doc) December 10, 2012
Tomorrow, I plan to pretend I didn't know Facebook was down and say self-righteous things like "Oh was it? I was too busy living to notice"
— D. B. (@RevDaniel) December 10, 2012
If facebook is down how on earth am I going to save some abused puppies by liking a photo 🙁
— Ineedmorecharacters (@nononodrama) December 10, 2012
Yes...Facebook is down, which means you all now need to be productive.
— 4Player Podcast (@4PlayerPodcast) December 10, 2012
Facebook appears to be completely down.This was exactly privacy policy I voted for...
— Dave Pell (@davepell) December 10, 2012
Facebook is down! I'm frantically googling pictures of people I've never met holding babies I've never heard of.
— Seb Farrell (@sebfarrell) December 10, 2012
Facebook went down. Gmail went down. I think we know what this means. They're going to have a baby. FACEMAIL G-BOOK, JR.
— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) December 10, 2012
Facebook is down which means my cows on Farmville are going to die :@@@@@@ lol
— ▲ Jeevan Gill ▼ (@Jeevan_Gill) December 10, 2012
UPDATED 10:25 a.m.: From Google:
The problem with Google Mail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.
UPDATED 10:09 a.m.: There have been some blog posts and Tweets about problems with other Google services today. Google reports that an issue with Drive, its file-storage service, has been addressed.