Facebook made an important announcement on December 5: It launched a Messenger for Kids — targeted at children under the age of 13 years.
The new version of the chat app comes with strict parental controls, child-friendly features, screened content and various safety features to prevent children from sharing inappropriate content.
However, even as Facebook was rolling out the kiddie chat app, the adult version of Facebook Messenger went down briefly, and as usual users were panicky and took to Twitter to air their grievances.
Taking a dig at Facebook's Messenger for Kids announcement and the subsequent Messenger outage, some users tweeted:
Facebook: *launches Messenger for kids*
— Joakim (@iaoth) December 5, 2017
Facebook: "You can now import your Instagram contacts to Messenger"
Messenger: dies
Facebook launches Messenger Kids but right now Messenger adult is down in many countries. ?? #FacebookDown #MessengerDown #Facebook #Inbox #MessengerKids #Nibirologist
— Nibirologist (@nibirologist) December 5, 2017
While some users were not sure whether they were the only ones affected, others hilariously tweeted that Messenger going down means the end is quite near.
Is there anyone here who cant use their facebook messenger? Am I the only one experiencing this?
— Martin Keith (@mhartinn) December 5, 2017
Is anyone else’s Facebook messenger not working and just saying it cannot load the messages
— Peachy ? (@Megancsmithx) December 5, 2017
Facebook messenger inaccessible. Something's wrong. Here comes #endoftheworld posts. #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/fWN49d7s3E
— Weekends Forever (@foreverweekends) December 5, 2017
Another user going by the name @AfrikanNerd tweeted saying "Facebook Refugees" are trying to figure out how to use Twitter.
facebook messenger is down. facebook refugees be trying to figure out twitter DM. #MessengerDown pic.twitter.com/27bMQqHAlQ
— His Nerdiness (@AfrikanNerd) December 5, 2017
While another user tweeted "Facebook is DOWN, Messenger is DOWN #facebookdown #messengerdown Tell twitter because facebook won't work! [sic]"
Facebook is DOWN, Messenger is DOWN #facebookdown #messengerdown Tell twitter because facebook won't work!
— Magik (@officialdjmagik) December 5, 2017
The issue was not limited to a particular region and appeared to have affected users all over the planet.
Before everyone goes crazy like I did, just found this, please RT so everyone doesn't think it is just them like I did #facebookdown #facebook @facebook #Messenger pic.twitter.com/Fmvj8iSuZJ
— Script Nebz (@ScriptNebz) December 5, 2017
Facebook Messenger suffered a similar outage on November 30 when users reported being unable to send messages.
Facebook in its response wrote: "On Thursday November 30 just after midnight Pacific time we bacame aware that a few people were having issues with their Messenger accounts. We investigated and responded and the problem is resolved. We're sorry for any inconvenience."
Facebook has not yet responded on the latest outage.
