Facebook down due to an 'undisclosed issue'

Facebook suffered an undisclosed "issue" Monday that prevented some of its 1.15 billion members worldwide from posting status updates and other material on the social media website.

"Earlier this morning, while performing some network maintenance, we experienced an issue that prevented some users from posting to Facebook for a brief period of time," a Facebook spokesman told AFP by email.

"We resolved the issue quickly, and we are now back to 100 percent. We're sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused."

Users who tried to post on Facebook had been met with an error message that stated: "There was a problem updating your status. Please try again in a few minutes."

Tech website Mashable.com reported: "Facebook status update issues are not uncommon, but this one seems global - we've tested it from several IPs and received the same message."

Downrightnow.com, which monitors service outages on major websites, said Facebook had encountered a "likely service disruption." It also said user reports of difficulties were still coming in three hours after the problem emerged.

The issue was sufficiently widespread for #facebookdown to become a trending hashtag on Twitter.