In case you haven’t heard, the WeChat messaging service was down for a number of users this morning, July 22, and there was quite a bit of uproar surrounding the outage from many users who utilize the app as their primary source of communication.
The outage was first spotted by the WSJ. Tencent, the company behind WeChat, even went so far as to devote its first post on the Weibo microblogging platform that WeChat and some other Tencent services were unavailable starting at about 8 a.m. due to a malfunction with two optical cables in a server room. By 11 a.m. the company said on its account that service to some users had already been restored, and its engineers were working to completely fix the problem.
The outage has caused the company to be the target of much criticism, particularly from messaging rival LINE as you can see from the above screenshot. LINE seeks to oust WeChat as the most popular messaging platform in Tencent’s home country of China. Of course, with 150 million users as of May compared to WeChat’s 194 million within the country, LINE has a long way to go. WeChat has also been growing quickly outside China.
WeChat recently launched its gaming service with the beta release of a game called LinkLink and also recently launched a native BlackBerry 10 application. The company has also With collaborated with China Unicom in Guangdong to offer a WeChat SIM card solution as it seeks to retain its strong userbase and foothold in China.