WhatsApp just went offline across the globe, but we're through the worst of it

WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app, but even the Facebook-owned platform isn’t immune to outages. In fact, the app was briefly down for scores of people around the world earlier today.

We first noticed the outage on our personal device, as messages weren’t sent (complete with a clock icon next to the message to denote its limbo status) or received.

We weren’t alone though, as the DownDetector website received comments from affected users around the world. Comments poured in from users in Romania, Turkey, Oman, Hong Kong, Pakistan, the U.S., Switzerland, Dubai, New Zealand, Indonesia, France, Belgium, and Jordan.

The website’s coverage map specifically pointed to Europe, Malaysia, South Africa, and the Middle East as affected markets.

Users also took to Twitter to post about the outage, confirming shortly thereafter that the app was back online. The DownDetector graph showed a peak of 1788 reports after 2 A.M. ET, but this has since flattened out almost completely. Users also commented on the website, confirming that things are back in order.

It’s not the first time a Facebook-owned platform suffered major issues this month. Instagram users on Android suffered app crashes last week, but iOS users weren’t affected by the problem.

The news also comes after the company revealed WhatsApp will no longer be supported on Android 2.3 Gingerbread devices in 2020. It might not be a big deal, because Google’s distribution dashboard shows Android 2.3 (released in 2011) only accounts for 0.3 percent of all devices visiting the Play Store.

Were you affected by the WhatsApp outage? Have any more information to share? Then let us know in the comments section below.