I put off my data a couple of times and turned it on again. Knowing my message traffic on a normal day, I wasn’t buying the idea that no one had tried reaching me by WhatsApp in the past one hour.
At a point I checked data balance and saw I still had some gigabytes left. I then proceeded to restart my device all to no avail. It was only when I listened to the news that I realized that it was not just me having the problem.
I saw messages from some of my alumna asking that to be able to stay in touch I reactivate the telegram group. I did so and got responses from some members reassuring me that we could still stay in touch. Needless to say I slept early as my usual late night gossip chats on WhatsApp were disrupted.
Here is how some people reacted to the outage in an opinion poll on Facebook.
Obviously, some of us never knew how dependent we are on these three apps for communication and Information gathering till yesterday.
Some took solace on twitter but still admit that it was a serious setback not having these apps up and running.
Economically, millions were lost as so many transactions are done on these apps. It is a serious eye opener and a wake up call to develop more alternatives to these apps so as to avoid being stranded in case of any eventualities.
The owners of the app too,Mark Zugerberg and his team need to be more proactive in handling such issues.
People need to check their emails often too. I sent a friend a mail when I could not reach him on WhatsApp which he never saw till I sent a WhatsApp message today.
On a lighter mood, I have a client who sends me a WhatsApp message then sends me a message on WhatsApp still to ask me to check my WhatsApp. How he fared yesterday, I will leave you to guess
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