CALIFORNIA, United States — Facebook Inc. went down temporarily for some of its more than 2 billion global users after a technical error caused a glitch that blocked access to the social network.

The issue — appeared to be caused by a code change — affected a small number of users who were loading the site using a Chrome web browser from a desktop computer, said Facebook.

"Earlier today some people may have had trouble accessing Facebook on the desktop version of Chrome for a short period of time," Facebook said. "We’re back to 100% for everyone, and we’re sorry for any inconvenience."

Outages are rare for Facebook, which has become a digital front page for people to read news, share information and communicate with friends and family. Downdetector, a website that tracks outages, showed a concentration of outage reports in Europe and Australia.

By Adam Satariano; Editor: Robin Ajello, Giles Turner