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WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook are up and running again after a six-hour outage

All three services, owned by Facebook, share common infrastructure.
All three services, owned by Facebook, share common infrastructure. / SUR

  • The social media platforms and messaging app finally resumed their normal services in the early hours of this Tuesday morning

  • ISABEL MÉNDEZ

Shortly after 11.30pm in Spain on Monday evening the mobile phones started pinging – timidly – again as WhatsApp notifications started to return. After a global crash that has lasted for more than six hours, the instant messaging app was working again. However, the joy lasted barely a few minutes before the blackout returned.

Fortunately, a little later, in the early hours of this Tuesday (5 October), the app started working properly again together with Facebook and Instagram services also being restored to normal.

The more than six-hour outage that affected the three platforms was worldwide, and users took to Twitter to vent their frustration at the Facebook-owned companies. The reason for the global crash is still unknown.

It was on Monday, 4 October, at around five thirty in the afternoon (Spanish time), when WhatsApp suffered a cut in its service along with Instagram, which are both owned by Facebook. The company used Twitter to comment on what happened: “We are aware that some people are experiencing problems with WhatsApp at the moment. We are working to get everything back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience!" The message was retweeted almost 90 million times.

Finally, after WhatsApp was finally restored and working properly again, the company tweeted at 5.30am in Spain: "We’re now back and running at 100%. Thank you to everyone around the world today for your patience while our teams worked diligently to restore WhatsApp. We truly appreciate you and continue to be humbled by how much people and organizations rely on our app every day."