Instagram and WhatsApp hit by outage

Instagram and WhatsApp experienced an apparent outage on Friday. It began around 1:40 p.m. ET and lasted for more than half an hour.

WhatsApp was unable to connect to the server, and messages were not being delivered. It's not clear if the issue also affected Facebook Messenger, which last year rolled out new functionality to allow cross-platform messaging between Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Instagram was showing a 500 message, suggesting a back-end server error.

Instagram's error page

Instagram's error page. (Image: TechCrunch)

WhatsApp unable to connect to the server. (Image: TechCrunch)

WhatsApp has more than two billion users, and Instagram has about one billion users. Facebook's developer status page did not show any immediate outages.

Facebook spokesperson Leslie Grant said: "Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have trouble accessing some Facebook services. We resolved this issue for everyone, and we apologize for any inconvenience." The cause of the outage was not disclosed.

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Updated with comment from Facebook.

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