Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Down, Like Buttons Vanish, Internet Implodes

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 113 posts

Re: Facebook Down, Like Buttons Vanish, Internet Implodes

#71

Post by smackfu »

_delirium wrote: post #62
seldo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely that terms that are continuously mentioned in huge numbers (and therefore don't count as "trending") are omitted.

There are more principled ways to do that than a blacklist, though, like looking at current frequency compared to typical frequency. That way even something commonly mentioned could still genuinely be trending if it gets mentioned much more than usual on a particular day. (It's possible there are scale-related reasons that make this infeasible, though.)

Just not tracking the frequency of the most common words that will never be in the trending topics is probably a big performance win. I'm sure there is an additional blacklist that includes stuff like "and" and "the".

Re: Facebook Down, Like Buttons Vanish, Internet Implodes

#73

Post by rwhitman »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #42
rwhitman wrote: post #18

And that, my friends, is why its risky to build your business on top of FB Graph API. In terms of reliability, FB is not twitter, but it certainly isn't google either...

I came here to post this same thing, but I just started thinking about it. When was the last time FB went down like this and took a bunch of core functionality down with it? Has it ever happened? And how long are they down...30 mins? Is that 30 mins of downtime every few years really more damaging than that the (potential) value that integration with the graph API or FB Connect can bring? Yes, you look like an idiot…

You're right, I should have phrased it "And that, my friends, is one of the many reasons its risky to build your entire business on top of FB Graph API."

Just went through a nightmare building a product entirely on top of fb graph. FB fails, a lot. And not just in terms of downtime, in terms of inconsistently implemented technology, poor documentation, lack of transparency, inconsistent policies etc.

Not saying don't use FB ever, just that it's risky.

Re: Facebook Down, Like Buttons Vanish, Internet Implodes

#74

Post by Terretta »

chrisgoodrich wrote: post #48

Everyone should calm down and realize that Facebook being down for a few hours is not going to kill anyone's business. It may cause trouble and disruption, but not anything more intense than a daily commute in Los Angeles. That being said, this makes me question Facebook's ability to deliver on the "Social Graph" promise. If they truly want to build a completely social internet, this kind of downtime can't happen.

> "If they truly want to build a completely social internet, this kind of downtime can't happen."

Why not?

Even commerce sites such as Amazon or Ebay have downtime. Studies demonstrate that unless you're selling a perfectly commoditized generic product, obtainable instantly from multiple sources, downtime doesn't materially impact revenue.

Users seem to manage to "queue up" their intended actions and do them when a site is back. And it's not like Facebook's users can gravitate en masse to anywhere else.

The founding principle of the internet is not "5 nines" uptime for all components, but resiliency. Switch off your mail server for a few hours; you'll still get all your mail when you turn it back on.

"Kids these days" build apps and APIs (and sites that rely on APIs) that are much more brittle, because today's developers are spoiled into thinking communication conduits are reliable. They're not.

The fabric fails, so your site, your apps, your protocols, should fail gracefully -- and recover gracefully later.

Re: Facebook Down, Like Buttons Vanish, Internet Implodes

#76

Post by joebasirico »

When I heard FB was down I went over to twitter to see how many tweets this was generating, I was surprised to see the first refresh of "XXXX more tweets since you started searching."

I decided to start keeping track and I made a graph of the difference between refreshes. You can see my graph here. It seems like in the course of just a few minutes (I was probably conducting my little experiment for 10 min?) you can see the frenzy gaining momentum then it seems to die down until only hundreds of people are talking about it per 15 second refresh.

A little bit about the graph, each tick mark on the bottom represents a refresh (15 seconds or so I think). The Y axis is the difference between refreshes.

Graph: http://drp.ly/e3oH

Re: Facebook Down, Like Buttons Vanish, Internet Implodes

#78

Post by doron »

nkassis wrote: post #56
doron wrote: post #35

IT Dept. around the world will now get washed with calls, on how the internets dont work.

the BOFH will be making a list of people wasting time on facebook for later blackmail.

joking aside, this actually had this effect, as so many pages actually resolve some components to facebook.com, the slower response was felt on a wide variety of sites.
Post reply on HN