WhatsApp Recovers after a global downtime

WhatsApp messenger is now functional after a downtime experienced across the globe.

WhatsApp trended on Twitter on the 3rd of November mid-morning (+0300GMT) after users were unable to send and receive messages through the application which is owned by Facebook.

According to The Independent, people couldn’t send or receive messages using the Facebook-owned app, apparently because of a server problem.

The app didn’t initially look broken, with chats and contacts able to load. But once a user got into a chat, the app just showed a “connecting” message that never resolved itself, and so new messages couldn’t be sent or received.

The website Down Detector showed a huge spike in problems with the app, suggesting that almost everyone was unable to get online. The problems were focused in western Europe and Asia, but were reported across the world.

WhatsApp Web, which uses the phone’s connection, was also broken.

Unlike its owner Facebook, and many other large social networks and internet companies, WhatsApp doesn’t maintain a page to give users information when the site is down. It has an official Twitter account that is supposed to post when it is experiencing problems – but that appears to have fallen into disuse, and hasn’t posted since 2014