Spotty service at popular messaging app WhatsApp on NYE

It was down for most users in the United Kingdom and U.S. earlier in the evening on the last day of 2015 and it soon spread to other parts of the world with the dawn of New Year’s Eve.

Several users across the world are reporting issues connecting to WhatsApp on New Year’s Eve, and the Facebook-owned messaging service has acknowledged the issue.

In what can only be considered deeply unfortunate on New Year’s Eve, WhatsApp suffered an outage which left its users stranded, since ten o’clock at night.

It added that many thought there was something wrong with their phones or mobile networks until a spokesperson for the application confirmed an outage.

As is the norm nowadays, WhatsApp users immediately took to Twitter to complain about problems connecting to WhatsApp. The service generated the message: “WhatsApp Web requires a working internet connection, which you don’t have at the moment”.

Facebook said some users were still facing issues while accessing its messaging service. “We’re working to restore service back to 100% for everyone and we apologize for the inconvenience”, said a spokesperson of WhatsApp. However, according to Mail Online, a leaked screenshot revealed that the messaging app is testing a function, a video call akin to Microsoft’s Skype and Apple’s Facetime.

WhatsApp announced in September that it had reached the 900 million monthly active users milestone.

The IM app boasts nearly a billion users.

Other users could receive messages with some delay, but could not send a reply.