WhatsApp is back up after suffering an outage that affected users around the world for hours. The Facebook-owned messaging service confirmed in a media statement that it had been inaccessible, but did not say why.
“Earlier today, WhatsApp users in all parts of the world were unable to access WhatsApp for a few hours. We have now fixed the issue and apologize for the inconvenience,” said a WhatsApp spokesperson in an email.
User frustration was compounded by the fact that none of WhatsApp’s main social media accounts appear to be very active.
The Twitter account it once used for status reports has not been updated in more than three years, around the time that WhatsApp agreed to be acquired by Facebook in a deal eventually valued at $22 billion. The last tweet on its main Twitter account was from last August, while its Facebook page is updated more frequently but also relatively quiet and did not post status updates today.
Any reason @wa_status has not kept Whatsapp users informed as to WhatsAppening? :)
— Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) May 3, 2017
Any reason @wa_status has not kept Whatsapp users informed as to WhatsAppening? :)
— Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) May 3, 2017
.@wa_status @WhatsApp “We are working very hard to make this twitter account irrelevant.” 🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/LGDVdUOlIM
— Juanjo Sánchez (@mrtochmi) May 3, 2017
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier today on the company’s earnings call that WhatsApp Status, the Snapchat Stories rival it launched in the middle of February, now has 175 million daily users. That is about 15 percent of the app’s 1.2 billion users.
We’ve contacted WhatsApp for more information on what caused the outage.