What is Downdetector, the internet's go-to site to check outages?

The digital world more or less came to a standstill on late Monday evening when some of the most popular apps and sites suddenly stopped working. Tech giant Facebook and the other social media and messaging platforms owned by it faced an unprecedented outage that lasted for hours. It included Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger as well.   
 
Soon after that, the internet was flooded with reports saying that Facebook was facing an outage on a global scale and that people all around the world were facing issues. Majority of these reports were attributed to one particular site that tracks and analyses outages across the globe ----Downdetector.   
 
But what exactly is Downdetector?  
 
Downdetector is a website that provides users with real-time information regarding the status of various websites and services on the internet. As per its website it "offers real-time status and outage information for all kinds of services that users consider vital to their everyday lives and work."   
 
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What does it do?  
 
Downdetector usually relies on crowdsourcing to track internet outages globally. It collects status reports from a variety of sources, such as Twitter and other reports submitted on their websites and mobile apps. Upon collection of such reports and data, their system validates and analyses them in real time and allows them to detect outages and service disruptions in their very early stages. According to its website, Downdetector looks into over 22 million monthly reports from individual users for real-time analysis and verification of outage.  
 
When was it founded and by whom?  
 
It was founded in April 2012 by Sander van de Graaf and Tom Sanders and was later acquired by Ookla in 2018. Ookla is known for its popular speed testing application that helps users in measuring the internet speed on their devices.   
 
As per a Bloomberg report, Van de Graaf and Sanders came up with the idea of Downdetector in early 2012 when they were out for drinks at a bar in Netherland's Haarlem. Back then, both of them were employed at IDG Communications, the media organisation which publishes CIO and Computerworld.  Sanders was at the helm of editorial affairs as Editor-in-Chief, while Van de Graaf was a developer.  
 
Their newsroom would often get calls from readers telling them about an online outage at some company or a service provider. Their reporters, on following up on the disruption would usually get no response or would wait for hours for one.   
 
That is when they thought of creating a system that would automate it and let them know about outages directly, without checking with reporters. A proof of concept was built in a single evening, which covered the entire country of the Netherlands comprising of banks, companies and cellular service providers. Within a year, Germany too was added to the list.  
 
By their third year of operation, they had expanded to 21 countries, and in 2018, Ookla bought them over for an undisclosed amount. Sanders joined Ookla and went on to become a product director until his exit in 2020, while de Graaf continues to serve there as a principal solutions architect.  

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