Mark Zuckerberg Blamed For WhatsApp Downtime
Mark Zuckerberg was blamed by netizens for WhatsApp’s Saturday downtime three days after Facebook bought the app for $19 billion dollars, The Daily Beast reports.
WhatsApp users filled Twitter with their frustrations over the newly-bought messaging app’s downtime. Some joked that the WhatsApp team is currently celebrating the buyout at the app headquarters, causing their systems to shut down. More serious tweets were seen over the internet accusing Zuckerberg of buying the app and intentionally shutting it down in a conspiracy of transferring all of its users to Facebook Chat.
Mark Zuckerberg has been observed over the years of habitually buying out social media companies that were seen as competition to Facebook. An example is Facebook’s purchase of photo sharing giant Instagram which costed Zuckerberg’s company $1 billion dollars.
Some Twitter users accused Zuckerberg of “screwing up” WhatsApp.
Facebook officials refused to comment on the downtime but referred the press to WhatsApp representatives who did not immediately respond to questions.
Mark Zuckerberg was able to acquire WhatsApp from its original developers Jan Koum and Brian Acton for $19 billion dollars – $12 billion dollars in Facebook shares, $3 billion dollars in restricted stocks and $4 billion dollars in cash. Koum and Acton developed WhatsApp in 2009 and was first used by just a couple of friends and relatives before gaining millions of users over the next five years.
Despite accusations of intentionally shutting down WhatsApp for Facebook’s gain, Mark Zuckerberg has been heard before to declare mobile messaging as the wave of the future. Facebook currently leads in mobile messaging with over 950 million mobile users and with their acquisition of the 450 million strong WhatsApp, Zuckerberg has practically dominated mobile messaging in North America and Europe.
Zuckerberg’s acquisition of the messaging app is not a worldwide victory. Other apps like LINE and Kakao Talk are still gaining more and more popularity among Asian users.
In a recent Inquisitr article, Mark Zuckerberg was reported to be optimistic about his company’s future during the celebration of Facebook’s 10 year anniversary. Despite the ever increasing popularity of alternative social media sites, Zuckerberg was positive about Facebook’s future and its ability to grow bigger despite its age. His purchase of WhatsApp may or may not be a part of Mark Zuckerberg’s plans for Facebook’s growth.
Reuters reports that after the three-hour outage, WhatsApp is up and running again. In a tweet posted Saturday, the WhatsApp team apologized for the downtime and blamed the problem on “service issues”.
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