Bitstrips’ app is down, and it’s not just your device or Facebook account, the company confirms.
As The Inquisitr reported earlier, the Bitstrips app has taken the social web by storm this week, though the customizable comics featuring your own avatars are nowhere near new.
Bitstrips definitely hit a tipping point this week — and one of the fascinating things about the social web is viewing this sort of collective adoption of any given service or issue all at once.
In fact, I was messing around with Bitstrips last night, just before bed. And before I headed to my room, a few people messaged me to ask what these comics are that are suddenly all over Facebook, and how could they get one?
No one really knows why a thing like Bitstrips will suddenly catch on in a single day or week — they’ve been appearing in my timeline increasingly lately, but around Wednesday or Thursday, everyone was posting the cartoons, and it seems the company is shoring up their server capabilities.
Anecdotal reports of Bitstrips app outages Thursday are confirmed by the official Bitstrips Twitter page, where the social media team says maintenance was done in the afternoon.
This morning, Bitstrips was down for at least an hour, and the team again says server maintenance is the why behind the Bitstrips outage.
Around 11:30 EST, Bitstrips confirmed that server maintenance was underway, making the service totally unavailable during peak messing around at lunchtime on a Friday hours — which sounds sort of like an overwhelming amount of traffic rather than a planned outage.
Bitstrips tweeted:
@NeliaD82 Unfortunately we are unable to pull comics at the moment, but we sincerely apologize for any offense!
— Bitstrips (@bitstrips) October 25, 2013
Bitstrips fans wondered if the update would expand options for users in the way of avatar choices — hats, hair, facial expression, et cetera. The Twitter response says otherwise:
@bitstrips are we going to get new customizations with this update? new facial hair designs?
— S.Brown (@VAdashVA) October 25, 2013
@VAdashVA Unfortunately the update is just to perform server maintenance. Apologies for the inconvenience.
— Bitstrips (@bitstrips) October 25, 2013
The web comic generator also admits that the last few days have been crazy for Bitstrips, tweeting:
@sumerbreez The response has certainly blown our minds! Thanks for your lovely tweet ?
— Bitstrips (@bitstrips) October 25, 2013
And in response to a tweet that Bitstrips has “taken over the internet,” the team tweets:
@TheCompounder56 Next stop – the moon! http://t.co/wbPsFSaIyW
— Bitstrips (@bitstrips) October 25, 2013
Finally, Bitstrips says:
Servers are overloaded and FB & Mobile apps down. Working hard on getting them back up and running ASAP. Thank you for your patience.
— Bitstrips (@bitstrips) October 25, 2013
Have you gone Bitstrips’ app crazy lately? Is the outage affecting your mobile or Facebook experience?
