10pm UPDATE: WhatsApp fans are still suffering issues tonight with many unable to upload or view images, voice messages or videos.

Facebook, who owns WhatsApp, has now confirmed the outage with the social network saying it was aware of the issue and was "working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible".

ORIGINAL STORY: WhatsApp is easily the most popular third-party chatting app in the world.

However, the messaging platform appears to be suffering from problems today.

Independent outage monitor Downdetector has registered over 1,400 reports from users at one time insisting the app is not working properly.

An outage map showed the UK and parts of South American being hit the hardest by the outage.

In particular, many fans have complained they are unable to send or receive photos and audio.