The popular instant messaging service Whatsapp is up and running again after being down for more than three hours on Saturday. The outage happened just three days after Facebook announced it is acquiring the company.
Frustrated Whatsapp users turned to Twitter to complain around 12:30 a.m. (IST) on Sunday, with many speculating this was Facebook’s way of getting people to communicate though Facebook Messenger instead. A quick glance at the @wa_status account on Twitter shows Whatsapp outages have happened before, but the timing of the most recent one had many users thinking this was not routine.
WhatsApp is not working… Now everyone is on Facebook! Mission success! pic.twitter.com/e4Ng7o8USo
— César Trigo (@CesarTrigoEs) February 22, 2014
So it seem #Whatsapp is not working around the World. Maybe they are testing to see how many people will log in to #Facebook chat lol
— Steven Taylor (@steventaylorsa) February 22, 2014
At around 2 a.m. (IST) Whatsapp posted this message on its Twitter account:
sorry we currently experiencing server issues. we hope to be back up and recovered shortly.
— WhatsApp Status (@wa_status) February 22, 2014
Two hours and many frustrated user tweets later:
WhatsApp service has been restored. We are so sorry for the downtime…
— WhatsApp Status (@wa_status) February 22, 2014
Whatsapp made headlines on Feb 20, when Facebook announced it is buying the service for $19 billion. Whatsapp has been described as a “Silicon Valley startup fairy tale,” jumping to 450 million users in just five years and adding another million daily.