Whatsapp crashes globally, application goes inactive for several minutes

WhatsApp live location sharing feature to Android and iOS

World's most used instant messaging application Whatsapp crashed for a brief period of time and there are reports that the problem occurred globally. The messaging application that is available for various mobile OS including iOS and Android also has a web version where users can login in from the browsers of their laptop or PC.

The messaging service platform crashed late afternoon and all of its functions stopped working. Users were unable to send or receive texts along with media files. The app was completely inactive for several minutes before it got back live at about 2:33 pm IST.

Meanwhile, users took to Twitter to express their outrage over the issue. It is worth mentioning here that Whatsapp has 1.3 billion monthly active users. In India alone, the number of smartphone users who utilize the service of this app adds up to more than 200 million monthly active users. India has the most number of users of the app among other countries.

The messaging application was once owned by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both former employees of Yahoo. The duo worked on the app for five long years from 2009-2014 before Facebook acquired the platform for $19 billion.

The reason of the crash is still unknown, however, investigations are on-going to find it out. A similar incident occurred in May 2016 when the messaging platform crashed leaving several users outraged. We hope the development team behind Facebook-owned messaging app finds out the reason for the crash soon enough and mitigates any such instance in the future.