Well, that didn't take long.
Just days after its acquisition by Facebook, WhatsApp experienced a major outage. The company alerted users via its Twitter account, saying it was "experiencing server issues."
Of course, as is the way of the social media world, users were quick to offer up some pretty funny images and speculate on the cause of the outage. (Via Twitter / ColTalbot1, GiorgiGuelcom, JaneHopkinsMBE, JoshConstine)
But TechCrunch reports it's probably not a diabolical plot by Mark Zuckerberg or the founders out on vacation.
"In reality, it's more likely that WhatsApp's $19 billion acquisition by Facebook announced Wednesday led to a surge of signups and usage that has overloaded its servers." (Via TechCrunch)
The service has since come back online — the company tweeted: "WhatsApp service has been restored. We are so sorry for the downtime … "
A writer for The Next Web says the outage lasted about four hours, which apparently didn't go over well with users. The tech site reports competing service Telegram Messenger got quite the bump during the outage.
In fact, the company said it was registering 100 new users every second. (Via Twitter / Telegram)
But Re/code suggests users shouldn't really be surprised by these outages. The site took a look at WhatsApp's timeline, and said "the company's Twitter account reported [outages] in December, November, September, October, August, July and May of last year."
All things considered, one outage in the wake of likely hundreds of new users signing up isn't all that shabby.
