Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/02/24/whatsapp_outage_apology/

WhatsApp founder: Believe us, internet! 'Twas a DODGY network router WOT DONE IT

Says soz for weekend outage

By Brid-Aine Parnell

Posted in Software, 24th February 2014 11:01 GMT

WhatsApp founder Jan Koum has said that a network router caused the outage of the messaging service this weekend, just a few days after it was acquired by Facebook.

Koum apologised for what he described as the company's "longest and biggest outage in years".

"We are sorry about the downtime," he said. "It was caused by a network router fault which cascaded into our servers."

The timing of the outage was pretty unfortunate for new owner Mark Zuckerberg, who was the butt of a new internet meme joking that he'd only bought the messaging app to shut it down:

Others suggested that the service failed when WhatsApp employees took a little time off to celebrate the $19bn acquisition deal: ®