Instagram experienced a major service outage on October 31st, 2022, with users reporting disabled accounts and repeated app crashes. The problem persisted for roughly eight hours. However, not all users were affected by it, and those affected reported various issues.
Instagram officially acknowledged the issue at 10:14 AM Eastern time, sending out the following tweet:
We're aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account. We're looking into it and apologize for the inconvenience. #instagramdown
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 31, 2022
Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, sent out a tweet four hours later to confirm they’re still working on it:
We’re working on this 👇🏼 https://t.co/atZ3PgBOYg
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) October 31, 2022
Reports of an Instagram outage began circulating on Twitter around 10:00 AM this morning. Users reported losing thousands of followers in what appeared to be a purge of accounts.
The sudden decline in follower count is likely related to another ongoing issue, with some users being locked out or suspended from their account. Many accounts also showed big drops in followers.
Instagram has not yet issued a statement on the matter.
Thousands of people have been impacted by an Instagram outage that began today. The problem seems to be affecting mostly people who are trying to access their accounts from a desktop computer.We ran a poll on LinkedIn, which currently has 425 votes, asking people if the Instagram outage impacted them. Only 20% of respondents said they were affected:
This is consistent with the poll we ran on Twitter asking the same question, though with a smaller sample size. On Twitter, 24% of respondents said they were affected, and a third of respondents weren’t even aware of a problem.
On October 31, 2022, the Search Engine Journal (@sejournal) tweeted about an Instagram outage, stating that many users were reporting being unable to access their accounts. Alan Muther (@alanmuther) replied that he, too, had received a pop-up notification saying his account was suspended.
At 6:00 PM Eastern time on Monday evening, Instagram confirmed it had fixed the bug causing the problems. In a tweet (stating), Instagram Comms wrote: “We’ve resolved this bug now – it was causing people in different parts of the world to have issues accessing their accounts and caused a temporary change for some in number of followers. Sorry! 😵💫”
However, many users continued to report problems accessing their accounts even after Instagram said the bug had been fixed. The Search Liaison account tweeted: “We are seeing reports from people that they are still having trouble accessing their accounts. We're sorry for the continued trouble and will update as soon as we have more information."
Instagram is continuing to grow in popularity, with the photo-sharing app now boasting over one billion monthly active users.
This growth is being driven by increased usage among younger demographics, with a recent study finding that 42% of US teenagers now consider Instagram to be their favorite social network.
With such a large and engaged user base, it's no surprise that businesses are increasingly looking to Instagram as a marketing platform.
However, running an effective Instagram marketing campaign can be challenging, as the platform has strict guidelines on what types of content can be promoted.