WhatsApp is down. Here are possible reasons why it is

Godfrey Elimian
…the outage appears to be affecting users globally.
WhatsApp is down. Here are possible reasons why it is

Popular Meta-owned instant messaging app, WhatsApp appears to be facing a downtime, according to users. The outage began at about 8:20 AM (WAT), according to user complaints.

According to TechCrunch, WhatsApp has acknowledged the outage through DownDetector and WaBetaInfo, two web services that track the Facebook app.

Downdetector has had more than 60,000 reports of issues with the service, and the outage appears to be affecting users globally. DownDetector shows that users in the U.S. and India are among those most impacted by the outage. India is the largest market of WhatsApp users.

In a statement, Meta spokesperson said: “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we’re working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible.”

How to grow your business with WhatsApp

WhatsApp outages are still relatively rare, but they have major implications for communications worldwide as the service is used by more than two billion people each month.

When WhatsApp went down last year, a number of Brazilian workers lost their jobs according to a report by The Verge..

Hence, the recent downtime has resulted in a global users frenzy, with most trooping to similar social media platforms like Twitter to express shock, disappointment and very rare instances of amusement after they found out the site was down in a most amusing way.

Some reactions:

Soon after, a hashtag, #WhatsappDown emerged on the trend table on Twitter and the trend is growing by the minute.

WhatsApp outage: what we know

This isn’t the first time social media networks have been down. A similar incident occurred last year. Instagram went down for 1 hour in May 2021 and all Meta platforms went down in June. That was the most recent of many outages.

But, this is the first major WhatsApp outage since the service went down as part of a massive outage that also took down Instagram, Messenger, Oculus, and Facebook last year. That outage took nearly six hours before it was resolved and WhatsApp was back online. 

Read also: #WhatsApp Down: Nigeria is One of Many Countries not Affected by Global Outage

This is the first major WhatsApp outage since the service went down as part of a massive outage that also took down Instagram, Messenger, Oculus, and Facebook last year. At that time, Meta, known as Facebook claimed that the outage was owing to a configuration change to its routers.

This time, Meta’s other platforms- Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook- are all functioning fine right. The outage has affected WhatsApp, it seems.

This is a developing story…


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