WhatsApp hit with global outage for brief period

A global outage hit WhasApp on Thursday for a brief period, as users reported problems accessing the app. According to downdetector.com, WhatsApp went down in parts of northern Europe, Mexico and Brazil; some users in India also faced problems.

The issues started at about 9:42 pm EDT with people reporting connection problems, issues sending or receiving messages and problems while logging in.

The Facebook-owned company seemed to be aware of the outage, and a company spokesperson told express.co.uk that the issue has been fixed. ''Earlier today, WhatsApp users in all parts of the world were unable to access WhatsApp for a few hours. We have now fixed the issue and apologise for the inconvenience,'' the spokesperson said.

This is not the first time that WhatsApp faced an outage, which was also down for a few hours in May as also in all parts of the world. Users from Malaysia to Spain, Germany and a number of European countries faced issues with the service, with Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK being severely affected.

WhatsApp, which is one of the most preferred messaging apps is also a key tool for commerce in many countries, with more than 1.2 billion global users.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp businesses messaging services which rolled out for beta testing in India recently, gained its first client in online ticketing giant BookMyShow today. WhatsApp which has over 200 million strong Indian users started testing the new business platform a few days ago.

BookMyShow became one of the first client of the messaging service to sign up for the business platform, and getting their account verified by a tick badge with which Twitter and Facebook users are familiar.

According to a report on Factor Daily, BookMyShow on Thursday said that it had started working with the WhatsApp team. The ticket booking website sent WhatsApp confirmation to users for booked tickets following which, one of its users took to Twitter to post a screengrab. ''We will use this chat to send your ticket confirmation,'' BookMyShow's WhatsApp message read. ''To stop receiving messages from us, please reply with 'Stop'.''