Why Were Instagram And WhatsApp Down And Who Benefitted From This Outage?

Instagram and WhatsApp users witnessed over half-an-hour downtime tonight globally. It started around 11 pm when the users first reported the outage when they weren’t able to upload their photos or send messages.

What was the reason behind the outage?

Facebook who owns both Instagram and WhatsApp released a statement soon after noticing the outage. It said that users tweeted about the difficulty they faced in uploading content and sending messages during outage. A spokesperson from Facebook said that it was a technical issue that had been resolved and that they were apologetic for the inconvenience caused to the users.

What did outage tracking website say about the outage?

Downdetector.com reported that the Facebook owned apps Instagram and WhatsApp were down for over 30 minutes from 11 pm and 11:40 pm. The website noted more than 1.2 million reports about Instagram outage and over 23,000 posts about issues with WhatsApp. Downdetector website uses user-submitted errors on its platform to track downtime of different websites.

How was Signal benefitted from WhatsApp outage?

The rival messaging app Signal tweeted a swipe on the WhatsApp outage by expressing its solidarity with the people working on the WhatsApp downtime. It further stated that people outside the tech industry would never know how weird that sounded when someone said that they were looking forward to some weekend outage. It also said that Signal registrations were through the roof and welcomed everyone on its platform. It is to be noted that Signal claims better user privacy and security.

Source:- https://bit.ly/3rZAj4t

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WhatsApp Will Bring New Features To Take On Google Duo And Zoom

According to the WhatsApp feature tracker WABetaInfo, you will soon be able to add more people to your video call. At present, WhatsApp allows only four participants in a video call. But it is revealed that WhatsApp is working on the ability to allow more users to participate in a video call.

WhatsApp’s new video call feature

The tracker discovered the new features in WhatsApp v2.20.128 beta and WhatsApp v2.20.129 beta for Android. The strings related to extended Group Call Limit were traced in the WhatsApp v2.20.128 beta. But the feature has yet to be started for public.

WhatsApp is seriously working on increasing the limit of participant from four to unknown as it has yet to declare how many participants will it allow in a video call. The users will come to know about the new limit of participants in a video call once the feature is rolled out. Also, all this feature will become active only after updating their WhatsApp versions.

Warning for the new feature

The tracker gave no idea as to when will the feature will be rolled out commercially but it did issue a warning. The tracker advised not to update to the v2.20.128 beta, if you often use this feature. Earlier, this feature was spotted for iOS as v2.20.50.23 beta.

WhatsApp v2.20.129 beta

This Android feature is about a new Call Header. It updates the users that all calls are secured with end-to-end encryption. Also, this feature is yet to be updated by WhatsApp.

Source: https://bit.ly/2VjRwYl

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WhatsApp: Send Messages Without Saving Contacts

WhatsApp allows sending messages to phone numbers saved in the Contact Book of your phone. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t message to the numbers outside of your contact list. There are many third-party apps that make WhatsApp to send messages to any phone number in the world.

Send WhatsApp messages without adding phone numbers

There are two ways to send WhatsApp messages to phone numbers without adding them in your contact list. But the first one much easier and it works for both the Android and iOS.

  1. Take a Smartphone and open its browser and enter http://wa.me/xxxxxxxxxx, or this link — http://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=xxxxxxxxxx in the address bar.
  2. Type phone number with country code in xxxxxxxxxx. For example, take +919911111111. Here the first two digits (91) is the country code and the rest of the digits are of the mobile number.
  3. Open the link to access the WhatsApp page with the phone number in the link and a green Message Button.
  4. Tap on the Message Button to access the WhatsApp of the phone number.
  5. Type your message and send without adding that number on your contact list.

Siri Shortcuts

iPhone users can use Siri Shortcuts to send WhatsApp messages to numbers outside their Phone Books. Developed by Apple, this app runs on devices with iOS 12 or newer versions. iPhone users can download the app for sending WhatsApp messages to phone numbers they don’t want to add to their contact lists.

Source: https://bit.ly/2RliufS

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WhatsApp Achieves 5 Billion Download Mark On Android; TikTok Becomes Number 2 In Download

WhatsApp for Android has clocked 5 billion downloads. This Facebook-owned instant messaging app has become the second non-Google app to achieve this high mark.

WhatsApp popularity

With 1.6 billion active users, WhatsApp outperformed Facebook Messenger that had only 1.3 billion users and WeChat that had only 1.1 billion users in 2019. Also, it is the third-most-popular social networking site after Facebook and YouTube.

Android Police reported that like most Android apps that reach high download milestones, WhatsApp downloads also include downloads from Play Store and pre-installed app in branded Smartphones like Samsung and Huawei. These Smartphone manufacturers provide WhatsApp in the pre-installed app’s packages.

WhatsApp market

South Korea was the fastest-growing WhatsApp market for Google Play Store. In 2019, the download of instant messaging applications increased by almost 56%. Also, Google became the top publisher of mobile apps beating Facebook and it happened for the first time in five years.

Analytics firm Sensor Tower reported that Google recorded 850 million downloads from its Play Store but Facebook could amass only 800 million. But Google is still far behind in the overall number of downloads from Facebook.

Source: https://bit.ly/37jamT6

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