'Sorry for the disruption': Mark Zuckerberg after longest Facebook outage

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today apologised to the millions of users who faced hours' worth of disruption in accessing the services of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram. Expressing his regret for the inconvenience, Zuckerberg took to Facebook following the disruption to let users know that the social media platforms are gradually returning online.

"Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are coming back online now," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.

"Sorry for the disruption today -- I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about," he said.

Taking to Twitter WhatsApp said: "Apologies to everyone who hasn't been able to use WhatsApp today. We're starting to slowly and carefully get WhatsApp working again. Thank you so much for your patience. We will continue to keep you updated when we have more information to share."

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp came back online only in the early hours of Tuesday, after nearly six hours of an outage that partially paralysed the giant social media network on the internet.

Earlier, a site that monitors reports of outages across the internet, Downdetector, said the Facebook service outage is the largest it has ever seen.

The company said in a post on Monday, "The largest outage we've ever seen on Downdetector with over 10.6 million problem reports from all over the globe."