WHATSAPP BREAKDOWN CAUSES PANIC

The messaging service down for about half an hour worldwide

WHATSAPP services were down yesterday for about 30 minutes across the globe, leaving users frustrated as they could not send or receive messages on the Facebookowned app.

Early reports said WhatsApp services in Europe, India, Malaysia and Singapore appeared to have been badly hit.

Also affected were parts of the United States and Africa.

There is no official word on what caused the outage or how many people were affected.

In Malaysia, services resumed about 4.50pm.

A check with local telecommunications service providers Maxis, TM, DiGi, and Celcom revealed that their networks were running smoothly during the time of the outage.

Users could still make calls, send SMS messages, and access other social media sites.

However, the short period of downtime caused havoc on social media platforms, with people posting messages asking for explanation.

It is widely believed that a server problem prevented users from sending or receiving messages on the app.

The incident showed how much people rely on the popular messaging platform, not just for chatting, but also for work and business purposes.

Ann Osman, a PR practitioner, said messaging platforms such as WhatsApp were important to her work.

“We have chat groups with clients/media which means we need not call, email or even meet with them,” she said.

“WhatsApp has tremendously changed the way we communicate because it’s fast and instant.”

“When it was down, we could not update clients on news/articles, and we had to draft emails, as opposed to more casual WhatsApp texts.”

Government officer Rafiza Rahman said WhatsApp had become a part of her everyday life, cutting down on unnecessary meetings.

“It’s a busy time of the year for me (with Parliament in session and many upcoming programmes and events). I have WhatsApp groups to cover all those at various levels, from the ministerial level to heads of agencies, management, working-level groups in the office and working committees. When it was down, my mind just went blank.”