People all over the world went berserk as popular messaging app WhatsApp experienced a global Outage. WhatsApp which is owned by Mark Zuckerberg-run Facebook stopped functioning sometime around 4:50 PM EST on May 3, but has been restored to normal. A spokesman from WhatsApp confirmed in a statement that the Facebook-owned messaging app was not working, but did not elaborate on the reason behind the outage.
WhatsApp social media accounts fail to update users
The spokesperson for the messaging service affirmed that users worldwide were not able to use it.
However, the issue has been resolved by the company, and it apologized for the same. Frustration was at its peak in the initial hours of the outage as most of the users were lost as to whether it was an isolated incident or a mass issue. Moreover, WhatsApp’s social media accounts were also not very active and failed to update the users of this issue beforehand or even after it took place.
The messaging app’s Twitter account which was earlier used to publicize status updates had not tweeted anything for more than three years. The last tweet was sent around the time Facebook acquired WhatsApp in a $22 million deal. Even the main Twitter account of WhatsApp was inactive as the last tweet dated back to 2016 August.
On the contrary, the Facebook page of the app is frequently updated compared to the other social media accounts. However, in the event of a sudden global outage, even the Facebook page was late to inform the users of the issue and give clarity to the confusion.
WhatsApp stopped working worldwide at the same time Facebook officials were engaged in the social media platforms Q1 earning conference call with analysts from the Wall Street and its investors.
However, the outage did not get any mention during the meeting as users from all over the world took to social media to complain about the issue.
Zuckerberg on Thursday, May 4 announced that WhatsApp’s new status feature, seen as a rival of Snapchat stories, despite the initial negative response, currently had 175 million daily users.
That would count for 15 percent of WhatsApp’s 1.2 billion users globally.
Facebook’s Q1 earnings call
Zuckerberg’s social media platform Facebook experienced a strong first quarter in 2017 and beat most of the Wall Street predictions. In its Q1 earnings call, Zuckerberg announced that the company earned revenue of $8.03 billion and its GAAP actual EPS stood at $1.04, a rise from $0.87 EPS estimate. Even its user count has also increased as it currently boasts of 1.94 billion users in the 2017 Q1, a significant increase from 1.86 billion users in its last quarter.
