

Facebook is back after a brief outage. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Files

Facebook experienced a brief outage Friday, preventing many users from accessing the social network via their computers, smartphones and tablets.

Users trying to get to Facebook's desktop and mobile sites were greeted with an error message: "Sorry, something went wrong," the message said. "We're working on getting this fixed as soon as we can."

Facebook said in a company statement that it was aware of the outage and was "working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible." The firm did not specify what might have gone wrong.

The social networking company, which now counts well more than 1 billion users among its ranks, doesn't often experience outages. But when it does, people really notice. In 2013, a service outage not only brought down Facebook, but also many sites that relied on Facebook's username and password system to log in.

As of 12:20 p.m., the site appeared to be back in operation, less than an hour after initial reports of connection problems.