Why has WhatsApp Status upload time increased to 30 seconds?

Introduction

WhatsApp Status upload time increasing to 30 seconds is a critical issue that could significantly impact user experience and engagement. I'll approach this problem systematically, focusing on identifying the root cause, validating hypotheses, and developing both short-term fixes and long-term solutions.

Step 1

Clarifying Questions (3 minutes)

• Looking at the timing, I'm thinking this might be a recent change. When did you first notice this increase in upload time?

Why it matters: Helps pinpoint potential causes and narrows the investigation timeframe. Expected answer: Within the last week or two. Impact on approach: Recent changes would focus our investigation on recent updates or infrastructure changes.

• I'm curious about the scope of this issue. Is this affecting all users globally or specific regions/devices?

Why it matters: Determines if it's a localized or widespread problem, guiding our technical investigation. Expected answer: It's affecting users across multiple regions and device types. Impact on approach: A global issue might indicate a core infrastructure or CDN problem rather than a localized server issue.

• Considering user behavior, has there been any change in the types or sizes of content being uploaded to Status?

Why it matters: Could reveal if the issue is related to content processing rather than pure upload speed. Expected answer: No significant changes in content types or sizes have been observed. Impact on approach: If content hasn't changed, we'd focus more on network and server-side issues.

• I'm wondering about our monitoring systems. Have there been any alerts or anomalies in our backend services related to Status uploads?

Why it matters: Helps identify if our systems have detected any issues that correlate with the increased upload time. Expected answer: Some increased latency has been detected in our media processing pipeline. Impact on approach: This would direct our investigation towards the media processing infrastructure and potential bottlenecks.