Facebook's down! Quick, post it on...everything that's not Facebook

The web is abuzz this afternoon with news about Facebook's technical problems and users' thoughts on the situation.

The site seems to be in working order again, but its problems earlier today caused quite a stir.

Mashable, the best source I've found for this type of news posted this article today. The Huffington Post reported the story here. And even the Wall Street Journal blogged about it here.

But what I found most interesting was my Twitter feed, which is still full of insights and jokes (being retweeted like crazy) about the social media site and the impact of its complications. Some gems:

@CarlosMiller: "How come when Twitter goes through its weekly crash, nobody on FB really gives a damn, but when FB crashes, Twitter goes all up in arms?"

@OPB: "BREAKING NEWS: Facebook is down. Worker productivity rises. U.S. climbs out of recession." and 20 minutes later "Top Tweet! Can it become true? @OPB BREAKING NEWS Facebook down. Worker productivity rises. US climbs out of recession. #truthiness"

@alexpriest: "Facebook fail whale: http://twitpic.com/1yqrwc cc @Boones6433"

@bcoz79: "First thought on #Facebook being down was, "I should post this on #Facebook !""

@alquaeda: "#facebook is down. Not sure if we did that, but we should claim credit anyway. Hitting the infidels where it hurts, etc."

@intuitivebridge: "Facebook is down....It just, you know...doesn't feel like it can go on anymore. It's not you, It's facebook. Really."

@mattwaite: "Irony: Hearing about Facebook being down on Twitter. Shoe. Other foot. Yeah." and "Dear internet: While Facebook is down, why don't you go on over to @politifact http://bit.ly/Onln1 and get your learn on. Just sayin'."

I'm sure there will be plenty more to come.

I think what we saw today really underscores the importance of having multiple social media sites. While some sites may become obsolete, the trend of moving on to the new "best" site and abandoning (or never even trying out) all others, saying "I don't have time for more than one" may be unwise. Particularly with the availability of tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, it's easy to share information across multiple platforms.

I was certainly glad to have Twitter today while Facebook was down, not just so that I could find out what was wrong with Facebook (and what people in social web thought about it), but so that I could still share information with a broad audience and find out what's going and what people are reading/watching in my social web.