WhatsApp says it has resolved technical problem

Messaging service WhatsApp went down on Friday afternoon, thousands of users reported.

Platform outage monitor Downdetector saw more than 50,000 reports from users shortly after 15:30 GMT.

These have since declined sharply, which may indicate that many WhatsApp users are no longer encountering problems with the app.

The majority of reports to Downdetector suggested users were experiencing difficulty sending messages.

The BBC has approached the app's parent company Meta for comment.

WhatsApp has nearly three billion users worldwide.

Many users have taken to other apps that are not encountering issues, such as X, to post about the problems affecting WhatsApp on Friday.

There have also been some reports of problems with Facebook and Facebook Messenger, but in much fewer numbers than Whatsapp.

Meta's last mass global outage affected WhatsApp and Instagram in December.

Meta's founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told investors at the end of January that the company was "making progress towards becoming the leading messaging platform in the US like it is in a lot of the rest of the world".

In October, he said more than two billion calls were happening globally on the app every day.

But the scale of the app's user base can mean that any glitches are felt by millions of users across the globe.

Few of the recent technical difficulties affecting Meta's apps have come close to mirroring the impact of its outage in 2021, which saw the company's apps go down for nearly six hours worldwide.