How Downdetector has become go-to site for online disruptions

Downdector reported the Facebook outage after receiving more than 100,000 reports from around the world. — Bloomberg

When Facebook Inc’s platforms went down early on Oct 4, the online tracker Downdetector was among the first places users looked to find out what was happening.

Downdetector, which uses crowdsourcing to track outages, recognised Facebook’s problems were dramatically different than a typical outage. Its system automatically released a notification, including a tweet, informing the Internet of the disruption.