WhatsApp users are experiencing New Year’s Eve outages

By Eric Brackett Published December 31, 2017

On New Year’s Eve, WhatsApp briefly experienced service outages in Europe, Asia, and South America, VentureBeat reports. Down Detector showed that the majority of service problems are concentrated in England, the Netherlands, and other parts of central Europe. The app’s service problems first started showing up on Down Detector at about 9 a.m. PT. However, a WhatsApp spokesperson informed VentureBeat that the troubles began at around 10:30 a.m. PT.

“WhatsApp users around the world experienced a brief outage today that has now been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience,” the spokesperson stated.

Recommended Videos

However, Down Detector still shows that several areas are having service problems and recent comments on the site indicate that some users are still having issues. Earlier on Sunday, a London-based WhatsApp user said that the service had been down since 6 p.m GMT and was still not resolved.

Beyond the service issues, several commenters mentioned that they were having trouble receiving verification codes, even though WhatsApp was once again operational in their region. It remains to be seen whether these problems are isolated incidents or part of a wider trend. WhatsApp said that the service issues were resolved, but it is possible that the messaging service may have missed something.

This is hardly the first time that WhatsApp has experienced such problems. In May of this year, users on the East Coast of the United States reported that they were unable to use the app, though it was not a universal problem. WhatsApp reportedly resolved the issue within a few hours.

While fairly popular in the U.S., WhatsApp is particularly popular in other parts of the world and has earned a reputation for quality and reliability. That makes today’s news particularly bad for the company, since it is likely that many people were relying on the app to plan News Years celebrations and coordinate with friends.

Service issues aside, 2017 has been a pretty good year for WhatsApp. The messenger service has seen a growth in its user base, as well as the unveiling of several new features and services. One particularly neat feature is the ability to take back unwanted messages.

Topics

Mobile

The 10 best apps for your 2025 New Year’s resolutions

An app folder on an iPhone titled "New Year's Apps."

The holidays have now come and gone, so that means it's time to focus on your resolutions for the new year. Yes, it's a little bit cliché, but for a lot of people, a new year means a fresh new start for things. And what better way to track them than with an app?

New Year's resolutions vary from person to person. Whether you're trying to be more active and eat healthier, or need to try and manage your finances better, or even just break bad habits and start good ones, there's an app for you.

Social Media

WhatsApp now lets you send self-destructing voice messages

If you’re on WhatsApp and regularly make use of the view once feature for photo and video messages, then you might be interested to learn that the feature has now been expanded to voice messages.

WhatsApp’s view once feature does what it says, deleting a message after it’s been viewed a single time. It’s been available for photos and videos since 2021, but now you can also send voice messages that can only be played once before they, too, disappear from the app.

Mobile

WhatsApp used to be one of my favorite apps. Now, I can’t stand it

For the best part of the last decade, WhatsApp has been my primary means to stay in touch with friends, family, peers at work, and even strangers. Texting is not as prevalent in my country, India, as it is in the U.S. for reasons such as the sheer dominance of Android users (as well as the diminutive share of iOS, and therefore, iMessage users), capped carrier costs for SMS-based messaging, and the poor understanding of RCS.

WhatsApp, on the other hand, is more widely used here than any other communication medium, primarily because it's free and allows the exchange of a multitude of types of media without being limited by national borders. People of all ages use and love it -- and they collectively send enough messages to clog up the internet.