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Thousands Without Communication as Massive Outage Hits WhatsApp The popular messaging app was down early Tuesday morning.

By Emily Rella Edited by Jessica Thomas

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

If you were trying to message your friends and family abroad on Tuesday morning to no avail, they weren't ignoring you — there was a massive outage on the popular messaging app WhatsApp.

Is WhatsApp down?

The international messaging app, which is owned by Meta, experienced a global outage early Tuesday morning that affected more than 1,559 customers starting at 3:14 a.m. ET, according to Down Detector. Outages peaked at approximately 3:29 a.m. ET when 5,469 customers reported issues with the service.

Many took to social media to confirm the issue.

Primary issues involved sending and receiving messages. The issue was reportedly fixed around 5 a.m.

Related: T-Mobile Outage: Is T-Mobile Down?

"We know people had trouble sending messages on WhatsApp today," A Meta spokesperson told CNN. "We've fixed the issue and apologize for any inconvenience."

What is WhatsApp?

WhatsApp officially launched for iPhone in 2009 and Android in 2010 before being acquired by Facebook (now Meta) in 2014 for an estimated $19 billion.

The app currently has around two billion users, who use it primarily to message friends and family around the world without having to deal with data or cellular service challenges that come with texting or calling on a regular phone plan.

Related: Amazon Outages Affecting Thousands of Customers on Netflix, Slack

This is particularly useful for users communicating with people in different countries.

WhatsApp's outage follows a slew of other app outages this year, including an Instagram glitch reported in June where iOS Instagram users would have to rewatch all of an account's Stories from the beginning (even after already viewing them) before being able to view any new ones posted by the same account.

Per recent app updates, the Stories glitch seems to be an issue of the past.

Meta was down just over 59% in a one-year period as of Tuesday morning.

Related: Finally! WhatsApp will allow users to react to messages with emojis

Emily Rella

Senior News Writer

Emily Rella is a Senior News Writer at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was an editor at Verizon Media. Her coverage spans features, business, lifestyle, tech, entertainment, and lifestyle. She is a 2015 graduate of Boston College and a Ridgefield, CT native. Find her on Twitter at @EmilyKRella.

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