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Facebook - and its subsidiaries Whatsapp and Instagram - are now back online after being down for about six hours. The company's founder Mark Zuckerberg apologised for the inconvenience caused to users - on the rival outlet, Twitter.

So what caused it? And why did it take so long for Facebook staff to get the services back up and running again? Well apparently amongst a host of problems: they couldn't get their ID passes to work to get into one building because the company's internal systems were down, and they could only use their emails for internal messages.

We got more from Alex Heath, senior reporter at the tech website @Verge.

"It certainly reminds us of the power of this company. If they go down for an extended period of time, large parts of the population around the world aren't able to communicate. And what does that say about the concentration of power in just a handful of tech companies?"

(Photo: A hand holding a phone showing Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram apps. Credit: EPA)

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