We don’t expect to hear the last about Whatsapp on a daily basis after its recent high profile acquisition by Facebook for a whopping $19 billion in cash and stock options but we did not anticipate a global downtime just when the popular messaging app has received what every other startup dreams off: celebrity status. You know, the point where the press forgets how many sleepless hours it took some focused minds to get things up and running but all of a sudden have a lot of interest in you due to the splashed cash and future potential.
There’s no formal explanation for the downtime save for a small Twitter posting by a dubious @Whatsapp_RD whose authenticity we can’t ascertain as it is not a verified account nor have we ever heard anything substantial in recent days. While that account may be fake, Whatsapp’s downtime ain’t. Previous downtimes for maintenance or bugs in the app have been addressed by Whatsapp’s main Twitter account. Looks like it is the season of downtimes for the big guys and small guys alike as we are just from a service downtime experienced by Google’s Drive days ago.
Whatsapp serves about 450 million active users monthly with 1 million users reportedly opting in everyday so a downtime of any sort is bound to be grossly inconveniencing given the app’s popularity in markets like Spain, Brazil and most emerging markets where other options like traditional texting are expensive and other apps like Line, We Chat, Kakao etc are only popular in certain markets and not everywhere.
UPDATE
There’s an update from an unverified account but one we believe is truly run by the maintenance guys over Whatsapp since all its previous tweets come at such a time, to provide updates when things are broken.
UPDATE 2
Whatsapp is back up
