WhatsApp back online after global outage hits users
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 [October 25, 2022] By
Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Supantha Mukherjee
BENGALURU/
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Messaging
app WhatsApp was starting to come back online at 0900 GMT and the
company said the issue has been fixed after users across the world
reported problems earlier on Tuesday.
At around 0750 GMT, outage reporting site Downdetector had shown over
68,000 users had reported problems with the app in the United Kingdom.
Problems were reported by 19,000 people in Singapore and 15,000 people
in South Africa, as well.
"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.
The company did not disclose the reason for the outage.
WhatsApp has become a critical means of communication for households and
businesses. When WhatsApp had an hours-long outage last October, it hit
trading of assets from cryptocurrencies to oil, before traders switched
to alternative platforms such as Telegram.
"This highlights the significance of vast hosting companies directing
data around the internet along with companies and individuals relying on
single points of communication," said Jack Moore, advisor at
Slovakia-based cybersecurity firm ESET.
"Multiple areas will inevitably be significantly impacted as a result of
this downtime, along with a predicted financial hit but lessons from
other recent prominent times when the internet has gone down will have
hopefully taught many to have access to other forms of communication."
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A woman uses her phone next to a logo of
the WhatsApp application during Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, India
September 20, 2022. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File Photo
WhatsApp's latest outage came during the festive season in India -
its biggest market by user count - when people use the platform even
more than usual to send season's greetings.
Shares of WhatsApp-parent Meta Platforms fell 0.7% to $128.85 in
premarket trading following the outage.
The company had not sent any fresh updates as users in Asia, India
and the United Kingdom started seeing some connections come back
online.
#whatsappdown was trending on Twitter, with more than 142000 tweets
and hundreds of memes flooding the internet.
"Everyone who noticed #whatsapp is down have come to twitter to
confirm it," says one Twitter user.
In the past, rival apps like Telegram, Snap or even Meta's Instagram
have seen temporary spikes in users when WhatsApp has been down.
While WhatsApp boasts of over two billion monthly active users and
have become a mainstay for messaging in most countries, Telegram has
taken up the challenger role with about 700 million users.
(Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bengaluru and Supantha
Mukherjee in STOCKHOLM, ; additional reporting by Nandan Mandayam;
Editing by Kirsten Donovan, Mark Potter and Matt Scuffham)
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