If you were trying to message your friends and family abroad on Tuesday morning to no avail, they weren’t ignoring you — there was a massive outage on the popular messaging app WhatsApp.
Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Is WhatsApp down?
The international messaging app, which is owned by Meta, experienced a global outage early Tuesday morning that affected more than 1,559 customers starting at 3:14 a.m. ET, according to Down Detector. Outages peaked at approximately 3:29 a.m. ET when 5,469 customers reported issues with the service.
Many took to social media to confirm the issue.
When your WhatsApp is playing up but you come to Twitter and see that everyone else is having the same problem #WhatsAppDown pic.twitter.com/pMcJm0Zn56
— Jamie (@GingerPower_) October 25, 2022
Primary issues involved sending and receiving messages. The issue was reportedly fixed around 5 a.m.
WhatsApp services have been down for the last 30 minutes. pic.twitter.com/9WL4mMFTRO
— ANI (@ANI) October 25, 2022
Related: T-Mobile Outage: Is T-Mobile Down?
“We know people had trouble sending messages on WhatsApp today,” A Meta spokesperson told CNN. “We’ve fixed the issue and apologize for any inconvenience.”
What is WhatsApp?
WhatsApp officially launched for iPhone in 2009 and Android in 2010 before being acquired by Facebook (now Meta) in 2014 for an estimated $19 billion.
The app currently has around two billion users, who use it primarily to message friends and family around the world without having to deal with data or cellular service challenges that come with texting or calling on a regular phone plan.
Related: Amazon Outages Affecting Thousands of Customers on Netflix, Slack
This is particularly useful for users communicating with people in different countries.
WhatsApp’s outage follows a slew of other app outages this year, including an Instagram glitch reported in June where iOS Instagram users would have to rewatch all of an account’s Stories from the beginning (even after already viewing them) before being able to view any new ones posted by the same account.
Per recent app updates, the Stories glitch seems to be an issue of the past.
Meta was down just over 59% in a one-year period as of Tuesday morning.
Related: Finally! WhatsApp will allow users to react to messages with emojis
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