Social media platforms WhatsApp and Instagram suffered a major outage on Friday night, but the services resumed after some time. All Facebook services were inaccessible around 45 minutes on Friday due to a technical glitch.
Many WhatsApp users reported inability to send and receive messages, while Instagram too was down during the period. Independent tracking portal Downdetector showed a spike in the outage reported by users of both WhatsApp and Instagram. WhatsApp competitor Signal which has pushed its service on the plank of better privacy, said its registrations had shot up.
#WhatsAppDown and #InstagramDown soon started trending on Twitter, after users realised the problem wasn't with their internet connections but with Facebook services.
The Facebook-owned platforms later said the "technical issue" had been resolved. "A technical issue caused people to have trouble accessing some Facebook services. We resolved this issue for everyone, and we apologize for any inconvenience," a Facebook spokesperson said.
"Thanks for your patience, that was a long 45 minutes but we are back!" WhatsApp posted on Twitter.
"Some people were having issues with their Instagram accounts earlier, but we're back now. The issue's been fixed and we're sorry for the trouble," Instagram tweeted, along with a GIF.
Downdetector, which tracks outages on websites, saw a huge spike in incidents being reported around 11 pm for Instagram and WhatsApp.
“Signal registrations are through the roof; welcome everyone! Solidarity to the folks working on the WhatsApp outage. People outside of the tech industry will never understand how weird it sounds when someone says that they are "looking forward to some weekend downtime,” it said. In January, Signal, after a surge in new users after WhatsApp's controversial update to its privacy policy, saw a massive 24-hour long outage with some experiencing error messages even later.
With PTI inputs