(Screenshot: Amazon)

Amazon.com's homepage appears to be temporarily down, showing a "service unavailable" message to users. Links within Amazon are still functional, but the homepage is inaccessible.

As TechCrunch notes, the site is serving a 503 error, indicating that "the server powering the site is down due to maintenance or overloading," which can mean the server is being DDOS'd. Amazon Web Services' dashboard says all hosting services appear to be operating normally.

The hacker group Nazi Gods is claiming responsibility for the attack. "This is what happens amazon when you support censorshiphttp://amazon.com  #TangoFuckingDown," tweeted @NaziGods this afternoon, adding, "I may release a pastebin later explaining how and why we took out amazon."

In response to a user who asked if they DDOS'd Amazon, @NaziGods responded "we used a 7kbotnet running hoic 100 threads each. 80servers in botnet and a 16gbps booter." That means 700,000 separate web request getters running are running at once. This method would send scores of requests over and over again to the server, causing it to overload and temporarily knock the site offline. The hackers claim only the homepage is down because it is hosted on a different server than the rest of the site.

Betabeat has been unable to independently verify if the site is down due to the work of hackers like NaziGods or due to something else entirely. We've reached out to Amazon and will update when we know more.

Update 3:33 pm EST

The Amazon.com homepage appears to be back up.

Update 5:36 pm EST

Amazon has provided Betabeat with the following statement:

 “The gateway page of Amazon.com was offline to some customers for approximately 49 minutes.  Other pages of the site were accessible and AWS was not impacted.”

This is a developing story and we will update as we learn more.

(Photo: Down for Everyone)

This day, a day that will live in infamy, has levied blows at both productivity and procrastination. Earlier today Gmail went down for a solid hour, with Gchat inaccessible for even longer. And now, prior to 6 p.m., as everyone is figuring out how to spend the last few moments of the work day appearing to get something done while actually logging on to fruitless social media sites, Facebook has gone down for some.

Reports started surfacing on Twitter. HuffPo's Ethan Klapper tweeted that he was having difficulties, which prompted a sea of "me-toos." Oddly, he tweeted that his coworker, seated next to him, is logging on just fine.

The outage seems to be widespread--enough that "Facebook" is trending in New York, with the majority of tweets being complaints about the service interruption--but not affecting all users. Though this reporter couldn't access Facebook, other Betabeat reporters could.

Meanwhile, Down for Everyone or Just Me, the web's trusted tool for site outages, doesn't even recognize Facebook as a website. "Huh? http://www.facebook.com doesn't look like a site on the interwho," it returns. Though perhaps that's down, too: One follower pointed out that the site isn't recognizing Google either.

If a site falls in the forest while Down for Everyone is down, does it make a sound?

At any rate, we'll get through this--as long no one makes another freakin' Mayan joke.

We've reached out to Facebook for comment and will update when we know more.

Update 6:30 p.m.: According to The Next Web, Facebook is encountering DNS issues, which is why it's unavailable for some. "The social network’s Domain Name System servers are not directing folks to its site, causing it to appear as if the network is down completely," wrote TNW.

Facebook came back up for us a few moments ago, but still appears to be down for many.

Come back, tweets :( (Photo: Twitter)

For the past 30 minutes or so, real-time updating on Twitter appears to have stalled. The most recent tweet appearing in the Twitter feed of a number of users is from over 30 minutes ago, and the site has stopped updating itself. A scant tweet from over a half hour ago will flow in at the rate of about one per minute--otherwise, it's a vast nothingness.

Strangely, it appears that tweets may be working on third party apps like Tweetdeck, but not on Twitter's dedicated site.

"This is killing me," one Twitter power user told Betabeat, his pain palpable through the Gchat window.

Twitter's delay comes on the heels of the news that the head of the CIA has left his position due to an extramarital affair, so we are all really missing the chance for some great zingers right now.

"Worst possible timing," said Abraham Riesman, a freelancer for Vice. "Petraeus steps down and I can't even get any decent misinformation."

Mysteriously absent from this Twitter snafu is the Fail Whale, Twitter's anti-mascot who appears every time the website is down. The company has spent the better half of this week patting itself on the back for withstanding the election night tweet load and touting its Ruby-to-Java transformation for the fix. But just because you don't see our old friend the Fail Whale, doesn't mean the site ain't broken.

We've reached out to Twitter to confirm the issue and will update when we hear back.

Update 4:17pm

It appears to be back. Twitter status blog clarifies a bit on the issue: "Some users may be experiencing a delay with new tweets in their timelines. Our engineers are currently working on this issue."

The error message. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Good thing school's out for summer. Wikipedia, the Internet's favorite knowledge base, has been down for the last 45 minutes.

The Wikimedia foundation tweeted that its engineers are currently working on solving the problem. Betabeat can access individual articles, but gets the above error message when trying to navigate to the main page. Hopefully it should be back up soon.

In the meantime, if you're jonesing for your Wiki fix, here's a pro tip: just read the Google cache version of the article. Or just continue to freak out.

Reactions ranged from Debby in Germany, who took the opportunity to abuse Twitter with profanity:

To Thom Stoodley, who proposed an explanation for the outage:

Then there were those who seemed resigned but resentful, like Tumblrer sarahsamudre, who capped the strange landing page and simply wrote, "I want to use <%=reason %> as my excuse for things."

The despairing and Twitterless masses also took their wailing and gnashing of teeth to Facebook timelines:

Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke's Facebook response was particularly eloquent, as if the vox populi on both Tumblr and Facebook were momentarily channeled through him and him alone:

So say we all, Mr. Huppke.

(Photo: Twitter)

It appears that the Internet is greatly enjoying fucking with us today. Earlier this morning, Gchat experienced an outage, and as of 20 minutes ago, Twitter went dead. Strangely, obsessively refreshing does not fix the problem, and yields only a sad "This webpage is not available" message from our browser of choice (Chrome, duh).

The Twitter Status blog updated 19 minutes ago with the following message:

It's not funny, Zuck. (Photo: In the Capital)

Here we were, prepping a Zynga post, when we popped over to check a detail on Facebook and discovered much to our horror a page that read "The webpage at https://www.facebook.com/ is currently unavailable."

Nor is it our admittedly budget Internet, either: A quick check of Twitter reveals that this Betabeat reporter is not alone, with a flood of tweets confirming the social network is down for at least some users. DownRightNow confirms, as does downforeveryoneorjustme.com/facebook.com. We checked Facebook's official Twitter account, but it hasn't been updated since May 24th, of course.

We've reached out to Facebook for details and will update when we hear more. In the meantime, please remain calm, Twitter and Tumblr are still functioning.

Presumably Sheryl Sandberg, corporate ninja, is personally sorting this out as we speak.