Facebook Pulls a Sidekick and Cuts Off About 150,000 Users

Posted 10/12/2009 at 5:25pm | by Ryan Whitwam

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It turns out that Sidekick users aren’t the only ones losing data this week. Several thousand Facebook users that have been unable to access their accounts since last week are finally seeing their profiles return. The only catch? The data from recent profile updates has been lost.

The outage was the result of, “a technical issue with a single database,” according to Facebook. Luckily, only a small fraction of Facebook’s users were affected. Unluckily, Facebook has so many users that the ‘small fraction’ works out to about 150,000. When the profiles were restored, Facebook presented users with a message that read in part, “We have done our best to restore your account to its most recent state, but some data and settings may not be current.” This could include pictures, status updates, and friend list changes, just to name a few.

Overall, the data loss was relatively minor. No profiles have gone missing entirely. So at least on that front they’re ahead of Danger/Microsoft. Most of the complaints arising from the incident seem to revolve around Facebook’s customer service. They said very little about the situation until just recently. A Facebook rep indicated that the company wanted to get the specifics figured out before providing potentially incorrect information. If you rely on Facebook, how much downtime is acceptable? Would you consider keeping important contact info or pictures on it?