WhatsApp has suffered its second major outage of the month, as social media users question ‘is WhatsApp down?’ on Twitter.
Chaos stuck the WhatsApp mobile app once again, as connectivity problems hit many of the service’s users.
More than 1.2 billion people around the globe use WhatsApp to chat with friends. Although, many went without the popular app for a number of hours on Wednesday, May 17.
Users were met by a spinning wheel and ‘connecting’ status upon launching the app. As a result, they were unable to send or receive texts.
The problems started between 5pm and 6pm BST, with users in the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and Germany among the worst hit. Although, users in the United States, Mexico and South America also reported issues.
The latest outage comes just weeks after a similar problem caused panic on social media on May 3.
The Facebook owned app has since apologised for the downtime:
“Earlier today, WhatsApp users in all parts of the world were unable to access WhatsApp for a few hours. We have now fixed the issue and apologize for the inconvenience.”
Is WhatsApp down now?
Users are now able to send messages via WhatsApp once again.
According to issue tracking website Down Detector, the problem was fixed in the UK by 7pm. The service is now working again in other parts of the world.
The cause of the problem remains unknown. However, the frequency of the outages is now a problem for some, with many moving to other services, such as Telegram.
A bad day for Facebook
WhatsApp’s recent issues were the start of what has been a bad 24 hours for the app’s owners, Facebook.
Facebook Inc. agreed to pay $1.5 billion back in 2014 in order to buy WhatsApp.
The European Union slapped the social media giants with a big fine, as they ruled that Facebook had lied to regulators during the takeover.
The fine could have been as high as £211 million (1% of Facebook’s annual turnover for 2016). Although, Facebook were forced to hand over £94 million.
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