Srinagar, 25-Oct; Messaging service WhatsApp was back up after an outage of about two hours, its longest ever. It stopped working just after noon in India and other countries. Restoration began by 2.15 pm, though users reported that it was not stable upon return. The glitches went away gradually.Prominent online tool Down Detector started noticing unusually high “problem reports” at 12.07 pm, and had listed more than 25,000 such reports by 1 pm. Nearly 70 per cent of the reports were about messages not going through, while others were about server disconnection and the app crashing altogether.Besides those in India, WhatsApp’s biggest market by user base, social media users from Italy and Turkey also posted about not being able to send messages. It was down for users across the UK.WhatsApp began to act up on Tuesday afternoon with messages not being delivered to recipients especially in groups, and social media platforms got flooded with memes from WhatsApp users across the world that flocked to the sites to check if others were facing the same problem.A Meta spokesperson said, “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we’re working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible.”WhatsApp had recently announced that it’s testing avatar support in beta. According to a report from WABetaInfo, Meta is testing the feature with a limited set of WhatsApp users on Android. It will likely allow users to share and configure avatars, and maybe even personalise stickers.This comes a few months after the feature was introduced on Instagram in May. It allows users to create a 3D avatar of themselves online that can be used with Stories and messages.Meanwhile, a meme fest with the hashtag #WhatsAppDown began on Twitter and other platforms. Many users said they first thought their internet service was the problem.
