Snapchat's Bitmoji Update was so Popular It Crashed Its Servers and Sent the App Down Its popularity appears to have taken Snapchat by surprise.

By Lara O'Reilly

This story originally appeared on Business Insider

Bitmoji

Snapchat announced a new feature on Tuesday that allows users to create cartoon avatars of themselves to add as stickers to their snaps and chaps.

It followed Snapchat's $100 million + acquisition of the company behind the comic-style illustrations, Bitstrips, in March this year.

After the announcement, Snapchat users rushed to download the Bitmoji app, create their Mini-Me-style avatars, and hook them up to their Snapchat accounts.

And the feature proved so popular it managed to crash Snapchat's servers.

Its popularity appears to have taken Snapchat by surprise. One source close to the company told Business Insider that Snapchat is seeing more usage with Bitmoji right now than it is with the Memories feature it launched earlier this month, which allows users to save their snaps indefinitely.

This chart from Down Detector shows Snapchat suffered a brief period of outage on Wednesday morning:

Another chart from Outage.Report confirms there was an issue (different time zones explain why the outage times on the two graphs don't match):

Lots of users also complained on Twitter that they were struggling to access the Snapchat app:

A day earlier, Snapchat had acknowledged that some users were struggling to link the Bitmoji app to their Snapchat accounts.

The Snapchat Support account has not tweeted since.

Snapchat declined to comment.

Fortunately, the apparent Snapchat and Bitmoji outage didn't prevent Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr announcing her engagement to Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel using Bitmoji on Wednesday:

A photo posted by Miranda (@mirandakerr) on Jul 20, 2016 at 8:39am PDT

Lara O'Reilly

Contributor

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Side Hustle

'I Was Called Crazy': This 27-Year-Old's Side Hustle Hit $30,000 a Month in Under a Year — Now It's Worth Millions

Changing regulations forced Angel Rodriguez's jet ski rental company to shut down, and the young entrepreneur had to figure out his next move — fast.

Business Ideas

70 Small Business Ideas to Start in 2025

We put together a list of the best, most profitable small business ideas for entrepreneurs to pursue in 2025.

Career

Automate Your Job Search and Get More Interviews for Only $40

Perform 50 filtered job searches a month and apply for 300 of them with a custom email.

Celebrity Entrepreneurs

From Hollywood to Harvest — How Zooey Deschanel is on a Mission to Make Fresh Produce More Accessible

Along with her business partner and ex-husband, serial entrepreneur Jacob Pechenik, Deschanel founded Lettuce Grow. This hydroponic vertical garden system allows you to grow fruits, vegetables, herbs and edible flowers at home.

Business News

These Are the Most In-Demand Jobs for 2025, According to a New Report

From software developer to registered nurse, these jobs have the highest number of predicted openings.