Facebook Bug Blocks Access to CNN, ESPN, Mashable

A recent Facebook outage not only prevented logged-in users from accessing the social networking site, but other sites as well, including Gawker, CNN, Mashable, and The Washington Post.

The glitch occurred Thursday, February 7, 2013. It lasted just a few minutes and only affected those people who were logged into Facebook at the time. However, the issue didn't just affect access to Facebook -- instead, users reported being unable to view many other sites.

Facebook Users Unable to Access External Sites

According to reports, when users tried to visit sites like ESPN, Gawker, and CNN, they were instead taken to a Facebook error page. The only way to avoid the issue was to sign out of Facebook.

Not long thereafter Facebook released this brief statement: "For a short period of time, there was a bug that redirected people from third party sites integrated with Facebook to Facebook.com. The issue was quickly resolved." (Source: washingtonpost.com)

No word yet on how those sites with Facebook integration feel about losing visitors simply because of an error affecting the social networking site.

Facebook integration is growing increasingly popular, as placing "Like" and "Share" buttons on a web page allows the user of a site to immediately spread a popular article to their friends and family.

However, given this most recent incident, it's clear there's a price to pay for getting closely involved with the social networking site.

Outages: The Domino Effect

This is not the first time a Facebook outage has resulted in a domino effect. Back in June 2012 a similar outage left Facebook users unable to access the sites of several prominent retailers, including Compuware.

And it's not just Facebook outages that have had this kind of effect on other sites. Late last year an Amazon could services problem forced many popular sites and services offline, most notably Reddit and Netflix. (Source: slashgear.com)

In fact, Netflix's video streaming services were down for several days at a rather inconvenient time: the Christmas break.