It might still be January, but Facebook has decided to introduce a sort of virtual spring cleaning.
The social-networking site, which famously opened its gates to developer applications last May, announced late on Thursday that it will soon be instituting a way for app-happy Facebookers to keep up appearances by relegating many of their widgets to an "extended profile." By clicking the button, you will be able to hide everything except Facebook's own applications and a number of others, and a "Show Extended Profile" button will reveal the entire thing to you or your friends.
AllFacebook noted that this may mean bad news for developers who've created little-known Facebook applications and are counting on viral buzz to grow their products. If those applications are rendered invisible by "extended profile" controls, that viral expansion could be stalled. Aside from that, I think the "profile cleanup" is a great idea. My kid brother's Facebook page is covered in more zombies and vampires than a Mystery Science Theater 3000 double-feature, and it ain't pretty.
But on a closing note, may I offer a plea to the blogging masses: Let's try to stop freaking out over every single announcement of an impending update to Facebook, every set-your-TiVo appearance of an executive, and each new time-wasting developer application.
Mark Zuckerberg's baby is a big deal, and has been a big deal for some time now. But, guys, it's getting to the point where we're monitoring Facebook's every move as though Zuckerberg were Suri Cruise. This might not apply to blogs that strictly cover Facebook, but for the rest of us--let's make a collective belated New Year's resolution to broaden our horizons a bit.
That said, it's a resolution I probably won't stick to.
Facebook representatives have responded to inquiries about why exactly the site was totally down for about an hour and a half today--it was a bug, they say, not a hacking problem or a server outage.
"This morning, we temporarily took down the Facebook site to fix a bug we identified earlier today," the company statement read. "This was not the result of a security breach. Specifically, the bug caused some third-party proxy servers to cache otherwise inaccessible content. The result was that an isolated group of users could see some pages that were not intended for them. The site has now been restored and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."
That would be why, it seems, some Facebook users (both on blogs and in our comments) reported that they had seen what appeared to be other users' data on their Facebook log-ins. So, to the bloggers who speculated a proxy issue: looks like you were dead on.
Tried to visit Facebook today and had no luck? It appears that the social-networking site has been experiencing some growing pains. No one in CNET News.com's newsroom was able to access the site starting around 10 a.m. PDT.
Some experienced a time-out while others were met with the message "We're upgrading. We'll be back soon."
Is Facebook down for you? Working for you? Redirecting to MySpace.com? (Just kidding.) Let us know.
UPDATE (11:24 AM PT): Facebook has updated its home page with a new message that says "Facebook is temporarily unavailable. We are working on it."
Additionally, a tipster fed us this one: London-based IBM employee Matt Dibb reports on his blog that Facebook had been displaying strange signs shortly before it went down, replacing his login details with an unfamiliar e-mail address, which led him to theorize that the social network may have been hacked.
Another blogger speculates that it may be a proxy issue.
UPDATE #2 (11:36 AM PT): At least for the time being, Facebook appears to have returned. Somewhat notably, I am now seeing longer URLs for the site's page destinations (rather than just the home.php, profile.php, etc.) than before.
Looks like this may have been an upgrade after all.
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