SINGAPORE - Popular messaging app WhatsApp suffered a brief global outage on Friday (Nov 3) afternoon, with users reporting that they were unable to send or receive messages.

A pop-up message on the help section of the app said: "Our service is experiencing a problem right now."

It added that the firm was working on it and hoped to get it working again "shortly", and apologised to users for the inconvenience caused.

According to downdetector.sg, the app had been having issues since 3.42pm.

Downdetector.sg analyses data from a series of sources to provide real-time update on information and outages for all kinds of services.

Users in other countries like Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam, India and further places like Russia and Brazil also experienced the issue, Reuters reported.

A spokesman for Facebook in Singapore said the company was investigating the matter.

Whatsappdown was the top trending item on Twitter in India, which is its biggest market with roughly 200 million of its billion-plus users.

Some netizens saw the lighter side of things, as they took to social media platforms such as Twitter to post memes poking fun at the outage.