ABDULLAH MUGHAL

LAHORE: A large number of people on Friday experienced hardships while communicating with each others as service of popular social media application ‘WhatsApp’ partially went down in the provincial capital.

As per some media reports, the services of WhatsApp also remained partially suspended in many other countries including India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Europe which irked many of its users.

Talking to Business Recorder, many people, especially media men, businessmen, youngsters and others expressed their serious concerns over the suspension of social media application. “I was panicked when my WhatsApp account lost working. I doubted it had been hacked,” said Ali Raza, a businessman. “In the meantime, his friend called him and informed that WhatsApp is not working.” After its partial suspension, most of my friends immediately took to other social media applications including Facebook Messenger, Twitter, IMO, Tango and others, for making voice and video calls, he added.

A police officer, seeking anonymity, said that partial suspension of this social media App also created frustration among many police officers as they could not communicate or share actionable information with their colleagues. “In most of the cases, the high-ups in the police department use WhatsApp and other social media applications for assigning us targets or duties,” he said.

Muhammad Awais, a law student, said he faced problem while sharing assignments papers with his class fellows. “It is unbelievable that a well-reputed social media giant went down suddenly.”