Three days after Facebook (FB)’s eye-popping acquisition announcement of instant messaging service ‘WhatsApp’, the company experienced a service outage for several hours, sparking frenzy.
WhatsApp, which has more than 450 million global users every month, apologised to users after its system went down for more than two hours on Saturday evening. The startup sent out a Twitter (TWTR) message around 3 p.m. apologizing for the downtime, saying: “Sorry we currently experiencing server issues. We hope to be back up and recovered shortly.” The message was retweeted more than 26,000 times in just a few hours.
The smartphone free-messaging app, which allows users to send messages over internet, avoiding text messaging fees, sent an update around 6 p.m. saying its services were restored, though some users still reported issues on the company’s Twitter feed.
Techcrunch’s Josh Constine speculated the downtime might have been caused by “a surge of signups and usage that has overloaded its servers” after the publicity the app received after Facebook ’s $19 billion acquisition announcement on Wednesday.
Around 70% of WhatsApp’s users use the app every day, according to Facebook. The service claims it is currently adding over one million new users a day.
The transaction marks the largest single acquisition in Facebook’s 10-year history.
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