Yesterday, many users took to social media to report a plethora of apps crashing on their iPad and iPhone devices. Developers also took it to the Github thread, reporting issues arising in apps as big as Spotify, Tinder, Pinterest and others. The reports of these app crashes increasing surfaced on a service monitoring site called DownDetector, around 7:30 am on Friday. The reason behind these major crashes seems to be Facebook's Software Development Kit (SDK).
Since using Facebook has become so common, users can find the option to log in or sign up with Facebook on almost every app. However, all the crashes that took place were not due to users logging in or signing up via Facebook. It was due to some issue in the SDK code which apparently resulted in the launching failure of these apps.
The reason Facebook offers its SDK to these apps is to collect user's data in return. Marketers use it to collect user demographics and trends, that is to catch up on their interests. It also fills in Facebook with the information as to how effective their ads really are. Facebook also offers to apps and advertising in return for them using the SDK created by Facebook.
Developers and users alike were affected by the crash, which caused frustration. The problem was resolved around 8 hours after the problem began to spike. That is, on Friday at 10:30 am, Facebook took to its developer forum stating the error had been resolved. No app crashes, however, were reported on Android.
