WhatsApp Is Down, Facebook’s New Acquisition Confirms Server Issues

WhatsApp is currently experiencing an outage. Users around the world are reporting that they can’t send messages, and WhatsApp just confirmed this problems with a tweet stating “sorry we currently experiencing server issues. we hope to be back up and recovered shortly.”

WhatsApp users are flocking to Twitter with memes joking that Facebook is shutting WhatsApp down or that its founders are now on vacation.. In reality, it’s more likely that its $19 billion acquisition by Facebook led to a surge of signups and usage that has overloaded its servers. We’ve contacted Facebook and are awaiting a response.

Down

When users (including me) try to send messages or check their existing chat conversations, WhatsApp gets stuck, showing an endless loading asterisk and the alert “Connecting…”

Reports indicate the outage started as long as two hours ago, and there were some troubles last night as well. We’ve received tips from frustrated uses in the US, India, Israel, and many places around the world.

As I wrote Thursday, being acquired by Facebook could give WhatsApp the engineering backup to be able to fight outages in the future. But for now, being the biggest venture-backed acquisition in history is working against the messaging startup.