WhatsDown: WhatsApp Suffers Extended Outage

WhatsApp is experiencing a service outage just three days after Facebook announced plans to acquire the messaging company for as much as $19 billion, according to the company’s Twitter account as well as those of numerous users.

sorry we currently experiencing server issues. we hope to be back up and recovered shortly.

— WhatsApp Status (@wa_status) February 22, 2014

The Twitter message suggests the outage has been underway for at least an hour two hours. We’ve reached out to the company to ask about its full duration, dimension and cause, and will update this post if we hear back.

But some online speculated (reasonably) that the service is struggling under the weight of a traffic surge following the highly publicized deal.

Of course, the Internet being the Internet, there was also plenty of theorizing that veered well into the conspiracy zone as well:

Haha classic #Facebook #whatsapp pic.twitter.com/L8BJEo3dHM

— Fabio (@fabfabfab84) February 22, 2014

Zuckerberg please hurry up and install those NSA trojans on Whats App so we can carry on with all our illicit conversations

— J M Ξ S H V D K N ! (@JamesHadouken) February 22, 2014

In fact, outages aren’t at all unprecedented for the service. The company’s Twitter account reported them in December, November, September, October, August, July and May of last year.

But true or not — and fair or not — the blackout is still not a great way for Facebook to introduce itself to WhatsApp’s global base of devoted users.

Update:

At least three hours after the service went down, the company said via Twitter that it is back online:

WhatsApp service has been restored. We are so sorry for the downtime…

— WhatsApp Status (@wa_status) February 22, 2014

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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