Facebook Messenger down: Messages go missing and app stops working day after huge outage

Facebook Messenger has been hit by a major outage, just a day after the main site broke for many users.

For some, the app wouldn't load at all. For others, conversations loaded up – but then the messages that should be there are missing.

It is unlikely that the messages have gone forever, but most likely that they are failing to show because they are not being pulled down by Facebook's servers properly.

The problems are occurring across the world, according to the site Down Detector. While they are concentrated in Europe, it is likely that is the result of timezones that mean most active users are online there.

The outage comes just a day after a new update to the Android version of the Facebook app appeared to break it and stop people getting online.

Facebook Messenger also received a major update at the same time, but it is not clear that the outage is at all connected to that new software. But the issues did appear to be primarily affecting those using Messenger on Android phones.

The site's platform status page – which is supposed to report any issues for developers – did not show any problems.