WhatsApp Restored After Outage Impacts Users Around The World

Facebook-owned WhatsApp witnessed a major glitch across the world both on Android and iOS platforms. In India, the users witnessed the outage on Sunday (January 19) noon, around 4 pm IST onwards, where many users struggled to send messages, view status, upload photos, videos and media files. However, WhatsApp seems to have fixed the problem, but the update on the issue remains unclear.

WhatsApp down since people unable to upload/send photos/videos/media files. Also unable to view status updates.@WhatsApp team should atleast take courtesy to update on issue. #whatsappdown

— bhushan gurav (@ImBhushanGurav) January 19, 2020

A Facebook spokesperson told Inc42 that some people may have experienced trouble sending and receiving files on WhatsApp. However, the company confirmed that the issue has been resolved. “We are back to 100% for everyone and we are sorry for any inconvenience,” said Facebook.

The issue came to light after many users began to use the microblogging platform Twitter and other websites to address the problems. According to outage.report, the website received 2891 reports, originated from India, followed by UK, France, Singapore and Malaysia. It is estimated that more than 109 countries were affected by this technical glitch.

On Twitter, the majority of the users reported about messages not getting delivered, while some shared their frustration via funny posts and memes. As users described the issue they were facing with the app, the top Twitter trend in India was #whatsappdown.

Me rushing to Twitter to confirm whether whatsapp is down #WhatsAppDown pic.twitter.com/ac6a7wyIl5

— Prajjval Singh (@PrajjvalSinghpk) January 19, 2020

WhatsApp Puts Ads Plan On Hold

Currently, WhatsApp has over 1.5 Bn users globally, and in India is one of the largest markets with 400 Mn monthly active users. In the recent past, WhatsApp had reportedly planned to sell ads on its platform. It had also deployed a team to brainstorm the best ways to integrate ads into its messaging service. But, now it looks like WhatsApp is rethinking its plans to launch Ads on its platform.

According to Wall Street Journal report, Facebook had planned to introduce the ads for WhatsApp status at some point, but for now, the company will develop other “money-making” features. Further, the report stated that these features might facilitate communications between businesses and customers.

Update: January 20, 2020 | 12:00 PM

The article has been updated to reflect Facebook’s statement.