Staff at Tech in Asia confirmed on Thursday that Facebook has changed the notification icon of users in Asia, Africa and Europe to showcase their respective continents instead of the past icon of North America.

Facebook, based in Menlo Park, Calif., had a notification icon featuring a globe with North America in the middle. But in an effort to reach out to the people of the world, the site has put different continents in the center depending on the location of the user.

Like Us on Facebook

The modification of the icon has been reported as early as November, according to Little Big Details. The online news site Tech in Asia, which has offices around the world, confirmed the reports were true.

There are more Facebook users in the Asia-Pacific region, with 410 million compared to the 204 million in Canada and the U.S., so the staff at the news site said it makes sense that the social network would want to be more inclusive with the action.

Tech in Asia contacted the network's Asia headquarters in Singapore about the modification to get a statement. The Facebook team was quick to respond.

"This is just one small example of how we're always working to personalize people's Facebook experience," Facebook said in a statement.

The worldwide population of Facebook users, however, were unable to enter the site to view their version of the  icon on Friday due to load-balancing issues, according to the Huffington Post.

It was the second time since June that Facebook has had such troubles.

The Facebook servers were down just after 11 a.m., but the failure was inconsistent as some users were able to enter the site with no difficulties until 12:15 p.m., according to Down Detector.

Numerous users of the network were faced with an error webpage, stating that "the requested URL could not be retrieved." The service was completely restored 35 minutes later.

TagsFacebook Apps, Asia, Africa, Europe