There was a WhatsApp Global Blackout

Do not boot your boyfriend just yet if you sent him a message on WhatsApp past midnight and he never bothered to reply promptly. It is isn’t his fault, the reason he couldn’t reply is because in the middle of last night leading to this morning, there was a WhatsApp Global Blackout that could have affected him and few other night owls and the insomniacs. I should have been affected, but thanks to the universe the sweet sleep came a little bit too early than usual.

The WhatsApp Global Blackout may be the reason I woke up to zero unread messages, but the blackout seems to have been resolved as I am now able to send and receive WhatsApp messages instantaneously. WhatsApp technical team, through an email message, have confirmed that the service is back and running, smoothly. The problem is, they haven’t bothered to explain why they had this blackout in the first place:

“Earlier today, WhatsApp users in all parts of the world were unable to access WhatsApp for a few hours. We have now fixed the issue and apologize for the inconvenience,” they wrote.

In the parts of the world where people were mostly awake during the WhatsApp Global Blackout, WhatsApp users attempted to find answers for the blackout on WhatsApp’s social media accounts, but to their bewilderment WhatsApp doesn’t actually use social media outlets that much. For example, the WhatsApp’s official Twitter account for reporting WhatsApp status and outages was last updated three years ago, at 1:48AM Nairobi time on 23rd Feb, 2014.

WhatsApp also has a main Twitter account where you would think is up to date, but the last tweet on that account was posted on 26th August 2016. So yeah, WhatsApp ditched Twitter, does that means they are more active on Facebook? Sure thing. Their Facebook Page seems to have at least one new post every two to three months, with the latest update having been posted on 13th April 2017.

The lackluster use of social media outlets by a major social media player is one of the biggest ironies in modern times. WhatsApp ditching twitter could be understable, since Twitter can be thought of a direct competitor of Facebook. This argument is further cemented by the fact that WhatsApp Twitter account for status updates was ditched around the time Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, but the argument cannot hold water as Facebook, the owner of WhatsApp, uses Twitter almost by the second to answer queries from Facebook users.

The once in a lifetime usage of Facebook also indicates that WhatsApp is generally anti-social media, and probably this is why they have been unable to effectively monetize the platform, despite having acquired over a billion active users to date.

 

Login

Welcome! Login in to your account

Remember me Lost your password?

Lost Password