Facebook Messenger is back online after short outage left thousands of users in US and UK unable to access the app or send messages

Facebook Messenger appears to be back up and running today, after suffering a short outage.

According to Down Detector, a website which monitors such outages, reports of problems with the platform first began to surface at about 14:30 GMT (09:30 ET).

Users mostly said they were unable to send messages, but others reported being unable to receive them and some said they could not even access the app.

A number of countries were affected by the outage, including the UK and US.

Facebook’s parent company Meta has not revealed a cause for the problem, but the issue appeared to have been resolved at around 15:30 GMT (10:30 ET).

The outage came just over six months after Facebook, Instagram and Facebook Messenger suffered a two-hour outage in July last year.

According to Down Detector, a website which monitors such outages, reports of problems first began to surface at about 14:30 BST (09:30 ET)

Meta told MailOnline that on that occasion a ‘technical issue’ had caused some people to have trouble accessing the firm’s platforms. 

More than 2,600 users reported issues with Instagram, according to Down Detector, with 3,200 experiencing problems with Facebook Messenger. 

In the latest outage, about 74 per cent of Messenger users said they were having problems with sending messages.

A further 16 per cent complained of being unable to receive them, while 11 per cent have had issues accessing the app in general.

London and Manchester in the UK were among the areas where most problems were reported.

Some 800 people in Britain logged complaints via Down Detector. 

London and Manchester in the UK were among the areas where most problems were reported