Consumer Preview Messaging: Microsoft Unavailable??

I've been trying out various Metro apps, and have more or less got them working except for Messaging. I seem to have successfully linked it to Facebook (at least I signed up for Windows Live/Facebook integration), but whenever I start Messaging I get a brief message that "Microsoft is unavailable" and no messages/statuses appear. That is, except for some blurbs from the Windows Live Messaging team. Down at the bottom it shows "Connected to" and a small Facebook icon. However none of my friends show up. It's possible, but rather unlikely, that none of them are online.

So has anyone else managed to get Messaging working today (or yesterday, for that matter?)

The messaging app seems to work for me and shows the last conversation I had also.

I'm not too sure how it works with Facebook because I don't have those accounts linked up.

Yes, I'm using my email address to login. It's a GMail account, though, not Hotmail. Might that make a difference?

In the past few minutes, the behavior has changed some. In the upper left hand corner it now displays Connecting... with the scrolling dots, but never connects. Funny thing is, Socialite did the same thing with the Developer preview.

Weather also sometimes works, sometimes not. Overall it's snappier than the developer preview, but it seems to take a long time for various apps to initialize.