WhatsApp has come back online after a global outage of over an hour was reported by users around Asia and other parts of the world.
The outage began at 0750 GMT and ended at 0900 GMT, with the messaging app announcing the problem had been fixed.
Problems were reported by 19,000 users in Singapore and 68,000 in the UK, as well as users in Thailand, India and Hong Kong, outage reporting site Downdetector said.
“We know people had trouble sending messages on WhatsApp today. We have fixed the issue and apologise for any inconvenience,” a spokesperson for WhatsApp parent company Meta Platforms said.
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Financial Hit
Multiple areas would inevitably have been significantly impacted as a result of this downtime, according to Jack Moore, an adviser at Slovakia-based cybersecurity firm ESET.
So there is likely to be a financial hit, as WhatsApp has become a crucial form of communication for business, he said.
WhatsApp‘s latest outage came during the festive season in India – its biggest market by user count.
Its last hours-long outage occurred last October and hit the trading of assets from cryptocurrencies to oil, before traders switched to alternative platforms such as Telegram.
Shares Dip
Shares of WhatsApp-parent Meta Platforms dipped by 0.7% in pre market trading following the outage, down 0.22% for the day.
In the past, rival apps like Telegram, Snapchat or even Meta’s Instagram have seen temporary spikes in users when WhatsApp has been down.
The post #whatsappdown trended on Twitter, with more than 142,000 tweets and hundreds of memes flooding the internet.
- Reuters, with additional editing from Alfie Habershon
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