WhatsApp went down briefly on Thursday, preventing some users from sending and receiving messages on New Year's Eve.
According to DownDetector, a website that keeps track of service interruptions and outages, the WhatsApp outage is primarily isolated to the UK and Germany. The U.S. appears to be largely unaffected.
The Facebook-owned messaging app has a user base of more than 900 million and works cross-platform with iOS and Android devices, making it a more practical alternative to iOS's iMessage. With more than 10 billion messages sent every day, it's no wonder the people across the globe freaked out when the service went down.
The red region in the image below shows the areas that are experiencing major issues with WhatsApp, according to DownDetector:
WhatsApp users voiced their frustrations with the inability to send and receive messages on Twitter, especially with the outage taking place around the New Year's holiday.
NYE crashed Whatsapp. #WhatsappDown— Pankaj A (@panku_) December 31, 2015
If whatsapp stays down how am I suppose to receive NYE messages from Tinder guys I spoke to once in March.— Rachael Krishna (@RachaelKrishna) December 31, 2015
It's been 20 minutes since #Whatsapp went down and not a single tweet from @whatsapp. Do they know the world has stopped moving?— Rich Powell (@mrrichpowell) December 31, 2015
WHATSAPP ISN'T WORKING. #whatsappdown pic.twitter.com/80PzPnkb2T— Gıo (@gio_smoqi) December 31, 2015
I'm glad Whatsapp broke down cuz now I have an excuse for not replying people— JianHao F² Tan (@thejianhaotan) December 31, 2015