Although Facebook’s (News - Alert) stock has fallen dramatically since its IPO last May, it still remains one of the biggest and most popular social media sites. I’m not too sure how many of us knew just the kind of power Facebook had, until last night that is.

Due to a brief glitch with Facebook Connect, several major sites went down.

“For a short period of time, there was a bug that redirected people logging in with Facebook from third party sites to Facebook.com. The issue was quickly resolved, and Login with Facebook is now working as usual,” Facebook said in a statement.

Connect is the software platform that redirects Facebook’s reach throughout the entire Internet. With social media being such an intricate part of Internet use, many third-party sites include a Connect “Like” button and many of those who do were briefly affected by the glitch.

Users who went onto specific sites and tried to connect using the Facebook login button were redirected to a Facebook error page. Some of the major sites affected included Gawker (News - Alert), CNN, MSNBC.com, New York Times, Yelp and Business Insider.

The glitch, which just redirected users to a new page upon loading, was immediately fixed once users logged out of Facebook. Although the glitch only lasted a short period of time, an event like this just goes to show the kind of foothold Facebook has on the Internet.

Facebook has continued to stay in the news as of late with its latest apps addition. Late last year, the company announced it would be releasing a “Snap-Chat” like app that would allow a user to send a message that would self destruct after a certain amount of time.