WhatsApp goes down and social media erupts as millions of users left 'in turmoil'

WhatsApp, the online messaging service, went offline on Wednesday evening, leaving millions of users worldwide "in turmoil".
The Facebook-owned service went down at around 9pm BST, affecting users in the UK, US, Nigeria,Australia and Brazil, among other countries. It returned at around 11.20pm.

It was unclear what caused the issues with the hugely popular online messaging service

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A spokesman for WhatsApp said: "Some people have had trouble accessing WhatsApp for a short period today.
"We apologise for the inconvenience."
WhatsApp, which is reportedly planning a major update,  did not comment on the cause of the problem, but complaints posted on social media quickly made the service the top trend in the UK on Twitter.
Many users reported being able to open the app, but not able to connect to its servers, making it impossible to send or receive messages.

Social media users reacted with horror, and amusement, at the outage as "the world fell apart".

However, there was one winner from the "crisis" as iPhone users revelled in their messaging service, iMessage.

It also left users longing for simpler times, when people sent pigeons or used old Nokias.

Whatsapp has swiftly grown from a small startup to one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, with over one billion users. Social networking giant Facebook bought it for $19 billion (£14.7bn) in 2014.
There are a number of updates in the works. Among them is one that could soon let users recall messages sent within five minutes, offering a way to prevent embarrassment over mistaken texts.

The sought after feature will allow users to "unsend" messages, removing them from a receiver's phone before they have had a chance to read them.