What Happens on Twitter When Gmail and Facebook Go Down

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.

UPDATE 9:54 a.m.: Google just emailed us this very brief statement: "We are currently experiencing an issue with some Google services. For everyone who is affected, we apologize for any inconvenience you may be experiencing."

Original post:

Gmail - Google's popular email app - has been experiencing outages this morning. At 9:30 a.m. Google updated its dashboard showing the performance of its services to note that it was "investigating reports of an issue with Google Mail."

It has served as inspiration for some funny Tweets...

Somebody in Google's Gmail division is having a much, much worse Monday than yours.

— Emily St. J. Mandel (@EmilyMandel) December 10, 2012

Gmail is down. I can tell by the looting, and the fires in the street.

— Ed Yong(@edyong209) December 10, 2012

Right now your mother is trying in vain to email you about Gmail being down.

— Comedy Central (@ComedyCentral) December 10, 2012

Sorry for the Gmail downtime today. I put my iCloud folder in my Dropbox, and put that Dropbox folder in my Google Drive. Whoops!

— Lex Friedman (@lexfri) December 10, 2012

With all this Gmail outage, it's a good thing that I still keep pigeons in my backyard. But how do I Bcc with pigeons?

— Evgeny Morozov (@evgenymorozov) December 10, 2012

How will the Gmail outage affect Hillary Clinton's 2016 chances? #punditry

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) December 10, 2012

Gmail being down is the nearest to a collective public experience we get these days.

— Jonathan Haynes (@JonathanHaynes) December 10, 2012

Well, GMail is down. So this is either a warning shot from the Mayans or they were off a week on calculations.

— Dave Levy (@levydr) December 10, 2012

Karl Rove is still insisting GMail is not down in Ohio.

— Garrett Quinn (@GarrettQuinn) December 10, 2012

Our great national GMail nightmare is over.

— Garrett Quinn (@GarrettQuinn) December 10, 2012

Gmail's down, Chrome is crashing. If Twitter crashes, I'm looting.

— StuffJournalistsLike (@JournalistsLike) December 10, 2012

Gmail goes down, people complain on Twitter within 30 seconds. We're really knocking it out of the park, humanity.

— Pete Bladel (@PeteBladel) December 10, 2012

Retweet if you survived the great #gmail crash of 2012. #Doomsday almost came early.

— Danielle Harsip (@dharsip) December 10, 2012

The Onion also has, um, coverage: