In a world where Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all are inaccessible… Millennials and GenZ alike came together to fully live their lives dare I say, offline. It was a weird but refreshing time for some, while others panicked continuously checking to see when the social media platforms would be back in action.
Well, last Wednesday Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all shut down for almost the entire day. People around the world noticed and were affected by these technical issues. Some experienced unloadable profiles, some were able to see friends updates but were unable to engage, while others were unable to login into the app entirely. According to a Facebook spokesperson, these issues occurred after an alteration to a server (Conger, 2019). Facebook and Instagram were only able to update users through Twitter, one of the only social media platforms it doesn’t own. This technical issue comes shortly after Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced a push to bring all of his apps closer together in hopes of protecting users’ privacy (Isaac, 2019). The 2019 Facebook outage which most likely affected upwards of 2 billion people, including businesses, is catastrophic compared to the 2008 outage which affected nearly 80 million users (Guynn and Weise, 2019).
So, what did users do during this essentially, 24-hour outage?
Many users took to the social media platforms that were still available for use, aka Twitter. After both Facebook and Instagram tweeted that they were aware of the situation and were attempting to tackle the issue immediately, users took to the non-Facebook owned platform to vent. Many users were frustrated with the outage and even began to “grieve”. Others poked fun at the #FacebookDown issue. Users were not only limited from viewing friends’ content but they were also unable to view businesses posts, ads, and marketing strategies for almost an entire day.
What then can businesses do during a social media outage, such as this recent one, to still be seen by potential and current consumers?
Depending on your audience, there are many other options for staying relevant and seen during a social media outage. Other means for marketing include unaffected social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Placing Ads on television and/or television streaming services is a great idea to capture the eyes of both younger and older generations (Shuford, 2019). All in all, there are certainly ways to be seen by your audience members even during a social media outage. Next time this happens, how will you or your business get creative?
Sources
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp Go Down. At the Same Time.
Facebook and Instagram are officially back and blaming server configuration change for outage
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Says He’ll Shift Focus to Users’ Privacy
HOW TO KEEP MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS DURING A FACEBOOK OUTAGE (OR OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA DOWNTIME)
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