Whatsapp, the most popular messaging application in Brazil, recorded a worldwide crash on Tuesday morning (25). The problem took over an hour to resolve and became a meme on social media.
The impact of the blackout, which affected billions of users across the planet, showed once again the power of deployment – and dependence – of this communication tool.
Users who feel hostage to their families’ WhatsApp groups had a moment of rest this Tuesday morning.
On the other hand, those who depend on the application to communicate in a professional context were kind of lost during the crash, waiting for new messages to appear on their screens or for the two little lines to turn blue.
“We know that people had problems sending messages on WhatsApp today,” a spokesperson for Meta told AFP. “We have resolved the issue and apologize for any inconvenience,” he said, without giving details about the source of the failure.
The first reports of users indicating problems were recorded around 4:00 am Brasília time.
The website DowDetector, which tracks digital service failures, reported that it had seen a major WhatsApp outage early in the morning, with complaints from thousands of users around the world.
WhatsApp, which surpassed 2 billion users worldwide in February 2020, is one of the most popular free messaging apps in the world.
The system was purchased by Facebook in 2014 for just over US$19 billion, the biggest acquisition ever made by the Mark Zuckerberg group.
The application has become a preferred means of communication for countless individuals, but also for companies around the world, and any crash can have an immediate impact not only on the lives of users, but also on the financial markets.
In October 2021, when the system suffered disruptions for hours, traders, accustomed to using Whatsapp during their transactions to buy and sell products as diverse as cryptocurrencies or oil, had to quickly migrate to competing systems, such as Telegram, in order to be able to close deals.
This Tuesday, the shares of Meta Platforms, the legal name of Zuckerberg’s group, registered a drop of 0.7% before the opening of Wall Street, in New York.
#whatsappdown
As soon as the crash was registered, the hashtag #whatsappdown (WhatsApp fell, in free translation) became one of the most popular trends in the world on Twitter. The hashtag #Whatsapp has also taken over Instagram.
Several memes immediately appeared on the networks. Some showed Zuckerberg standing in front of a wall of wires, trying to make sense of the glitch, while others illustrated users migrating to other platforms.
Meta’s platforms, which include the social networks Facebook and Instagram, as well as the messaging services WhatsApp and Messenger, have already been victims of an unprecedented widespread blackout in the past year. The most affected service was Facebook, which faced a seven-hour outage.
At the time, Facebook acknowledged that the incident was due to an error on its part and not a technical issue.
(With information from AFP)
I am Frederick Tuttle, who works in 247 News Agency as an author and mostly cover entertainment news. I have worked in this industry for 10 years and have gained a lot of experience. I am a very hard worker and always strive to get the best out of my work. I am also very passionate about my work and always try to keep up with the latest news and trends.
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