Yesterday evening, at around 9 pm, panicked Tweets starts to surface. 

"Is WhatsApp down? Are my friends just avoiding me, or is there an actual issue with WhatsApp?!"

That sort of thing. It became clear, within minutes, that there was, in fact, an issue. Users were simply seeing 'Connecting' on their screens, but no real information. 

WhatsApp outage map... pic.twitter.com/0X7ivotUGX

— Jess Kelly (@jesskellynt) May 3, 2017

To add to the frustration, none of the official social media accounts for the company were active either, meaning users were left to guess when the service would resume. 

WhatsApp resumed service for users at around 11.30 pm last night. While the cause of the outage is still unknown, a spokesperson for the company issued the following statement. 

“Earlier today, WhatsApp users in all parts of the world were unable to access WhatsApp for a few hours. We have now fixed the issue and apologize for the inconvenience,” said a WhatsApp spokesperson in an email.

We have contacted WhatsApp for more information as to what caused the outage.