WhatsApp down for 3 hours, 3 days after $19bn Facebook deal; service restored today

WhatsApp is the leader among a wave of smartphone-based messaging apps that are now sweeping across North America, Asia and Europe, and is known to appeal to teens and others who avoid mainstream social networks.

During the outage the buzz on Twitter ranged from the conspiratorial – that Facebook had really bought WhatsApp to shut it down and funnel users to Facebook Chat – to the philosophical.

WhatsApp, the rapidly expanding mobile messaging app, suffered an outage for more than three hours on Saturday, frustrating users just days after its acquisition by Facebook for $19 billion.
“WhatsApp service has been restored. We are so sorry for the downtime…,” WhatsApp tweeted to its more than 1 million Twitter followers on Saturday around 5:48 p.m. EST (2248 GMT).