Messaging service WhatsApp is coming back up though with some glitches — after an outage of about two hours, its longest ever. It stopped working just after noon in India and other countries. Restoration began by 2.15 pm, though users reported that it was not stable.
Prominent online tool Down Detector started noticing unusually high "problem reports" at 12.07 pm, and had listed more than 25,000 such reports by 1 pm. Most reports were about messages not going through, at 69 per cent, while others reported server disconnection and the app crashing altogether. These reports came down to about 3,000 by 2.30 pm.
Besides those in India, WhatsApp's biggest market by user base, social media users from Italy and Turkey also posted about not being able to send messages. It was down for users across the UK, the BBC reported.
Over 2 billion users rely on WhatsApp for communication and payments.
The company said it's working on bringing it back up. "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," said a spokesperson of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram besides WhatsApp.
A meme fest with the hashtag #WhatsAppDown began on Twitter and other platforms. Many users said they first thought their internet service was the problem.
Another meme had a shot of Farhan Akhtar, from the movie Milkha Singh, "running to check on Twitter if WhatsApp is down".
It's the first such global outage since last year. On October 5, 2021, all three Meta outlets were down for up to six hours.
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