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Facebook only took over WhatsApp a few days ago, and already it’s having to apologise for its mistakes. The free messaging service went down last night, and now new owner Facebook has said sorry.
Last night at 8:16pm UK time, the WhatsApp Status Twitter account tweeted that it was “currently experiencing server issues”. About two and a half hours later the service was back up and running, and WhatsApp tweeted: “WhatsApp service has been restored. We are so sorry for the downtime…”
Anyone trying to chat using WhatsApp during the outage would have seen a loading asterisk and a notice reading “Connecting…”
Facebook bought WhatsApp last week for $19 billion (£11.4 billion). This was split between $4 billion in cash, $12 billion worth of Facebook shares, and $3 billion in restricted stock units to be paid in four years.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said of the deal: “WhatsApp is on a path to connect one billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable.”
Facebook bought photo sharing app Instagram back in 2012, and partnered with music streaming service Spotify in 2011. The WhatsApp deal was the biggest in Facebook’s history.
Zuck obviously has a big focus on mobile, shown by the fact he’s the headline speaker at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.
Facebook has had its fair share of failures on mobile though, chief of which was Facebook Home, the app that put Facebook front and centre on your mobile. Despite its poor reviews and underwhelming number of downloads, Facebook is still committed to the app, the social network’s engineering director told VentureBeat recently.
Facebook also launched Paper recently, an app that effectively beautifies Facebook on your mobile.
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