Millions of people were left unable to use WhatsApp yesterday as the popular app suffered a global outage.
Users in Europe, South America, Africa and the US found they weren’t able to connect with their contacts to send messages, pictures of GIFs.
The Facebook-owned company has now issued a statement apologising for the outage and confirming that its service is back up and running.
“Earlier today, WhatsApp users in all parts of the world were unable to access WhatsApp for a few hours,” a spokesperson said.
What's down #whatsapp #whatsappdown pic.twitter.com/kSH7NTYN7f
— Susvith (@susvithrocks) May 3, 2017
“We have now fixed the issue and apologise for the inconvenience.”
Some users weren’t even able to access the app and were left with a “connecting…” message as it failed to load.
WhatsApp currently has over a billion active users around the world. Backed up by Facebook, is has a robust system in place for supposedly dealing with these kinds of issues. Mirror Tech has contacted the company’s representatives for more information and will update this when we hear back.
Meanwhile at WhatsApp offices:
– Please don't touch the button labeled "Global Shutdown" pic.twitter.com/ZsaHsYFGof— Mario RR (@mariorrcr) May 3, 2017
When it originally launched, the instant messaging service (which connects via 3G or wireless networks) was only available to smartphone users.)
As long as the double-blue tick wasn’t showing, users could reportedly press and hold on a message to bring up the options to edit or revoke the message.
But it is not clear if, or when, the update will be rolled out.
Como tou sem WhatsApp… pic.twitter.com/7bCgrBgJBJ
— J-HOOPE ESTRESSADO (@ashiyakook) May 3, 2017
Sin WhatsApp… pic.twitter.com/QSeNQVyFy0
— Mauricio MejÃa (@maomvalencia) May 3, 2017
