Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp hit by hours-long outages
Disruption comes a month after daylong outage.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were down for several hours Sunday.
Facebook , Instagram and WhatsApp all experienced worldwide service disruptions Sunday morning that lasted for several hours.
The outages, which began around 3:30 a.m. PT, prevented access to Facebook and Instagram, while WhatsApp users were prevented from sending or receiving messages on the chat service. Service to the networks was restored about two hours later.
"Earlier today, some people may have experienced trouble connecting to the family of apps. The issue has since been resolved; we're sorry for any inconvenience," a Facebook spokesperson said.
Facebook announced plans in January to merge the services of WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, allowing users to send messages to one another without switching apps. The apps will remain separate, but they'll be brought together under a single messaging platform or protocol.
The outage came a month after Facebook experienced a daylong outage that prevented the social network's 2 billion users around the world from using its services. The outage -- the social network's longest ever -- was blamed on "a server configuration change."
In November, Facebook went down in a mishap caused by a test the company was running. That outage lasted about 40 minutes.