On 4 October 2021, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp experienced a global outage, plunging a large portion of social media into darkness. We offer four takeaways from the experience.

 

On Monday, 4 October, and for about six hours, major online platforms owned by Facebook Inc., including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, were offline worldwide. It meant that these services were not available for the 2.9 billion monthly active users of Facebook, the 1.3 billion of Facebook Messenger, the 1 billion active users of Instagram, and the 2 billion monthly active users of WhatsApp.

From all reports, it appears that the outage was due to errors made during routine server maintenance, which not only affected Facebook Inc.’s very public platforms, but also those used internally within the organisation. However, with Instagram and WhatsApp, in particular being offline, many of us had a lot of free time on our hands, and a lot of time to think. Here are four lessons we believe can be learnt from the outage.

 

1. Besides entertainment, we may not have much use for a phone

The outage started around 11:40 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4) and ended around 6:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. It thus meant that the late-morning, lunch, afternoon and early evening social media fix that many of us enjoy was not available. However, outside of accessing social media, for what other important activities – measured in time spent – do you use your smartphone?

The odds are that the time spent on any other activity pales in comparison to the amount many of us spend on social media, and by extension, entertainment. According to BroadbandSearch, on average, we spend 58 minutes and 53 minutes per day on Facebook and Instagram respectively, and 28 minutes a day on WhatsApp. Moreover, the average person spends 145 minutes every day on social media, whilst those between 16 and 24 years olds spend about three hours a day (Source:  Letter.ly).

Further, and perhaps paradoxically, although smartphones are available at a broad range of price points, the odds are that the majority of us have purchased the best we can afford, or are prepared to spend. However, to a considerable degree and for the period that the outage existed, we may not have had much use for our phones.

 

2.  We may need to think more critically about business continuity

Although systems malfunction and outages can and do happen to the best of us, for companies as well resourced as Facebook, which was recently valued at USD 1 trillion (Source: HYPERBEAST), a six-hour outage seems almost incomprehensible. There is still a lot of speculation by industry pundits about why the outage happened, but for us mere mortals, an important takeaway is the importance of comprehensively addressing business continuity, and ensuring that suitable and adequate redundancies are in place.

In the Caribbean, many organisations that have focussed on business continuity have done so from the perspective of mitigating the impact of an external force, such as adverse weather, or from fire, pestilence and destruction. However, what happens when the trigger or source is internal – such as by an error made during routine maintenance?

Although it may not be possible to plan for every possible situation, with each new or potential scenario, the practice should be to pressure test, or assess, your organisation’s business continuity plan to see how well it holds up – especially for events that can happen at any time and without warning.

 

3.  Social media as your sole access to consumers is ill-advised

For many Caribbean micro, small and even medium enterprises (SMEs) social media and the instant messaging platform have become the primary way in which they connect with consumers. They promote their business solely on Facebook and/or Instagram, or send messages to a broadcast list they have created on WhatsApp. Should an individual want to engage them – to make an appointment, or need more information on a product or service, or express a desire to purchase – this is all done via Facebook, Instagram and/or WhatsApp. However, with all of these platforms down on Monday, it would have meant that business also ground to a halt for a lot of SMEs.

For SMEs that run their business on social media exclusively, it is likely that outside of these platforms, they have no other way to connect with consumers, such as phone numbers or email addresses. Hence, in the not-too-distant future should another outage occurs that is longer thanMonday’s event, the consequences could be dire for some businesses.

 

4. Consider and also use alternatives

For this point, the focus is not on social media, per se, but rather instant messaging and WhatsApp. People are no longer calling each other via the mobile/cellular service provider, but rather, via WhatsApp. However, it was interesting to several of my contacts that signed up to Telegram on Monday, and those who had to resort to sending text messages and making traditional telephone calls, which had become the exception than the norm.

Having said this, and with WhatsApp back on track, it is unclear whether people are using platforms like Signal and Telegram more. The odds are they are not, since by all reports, WhatsApp’s service is working smoothly. However, each platform has its own unique features and its quirks, for which some (slight) adjustment may be required. Besides the sense of not having all of one’s eggs in one basket, getting familiar with other instant messaging platforms is useful, and it fosters a certain flexibility, and ease in pivoting when the need arises.

 

 

Image credit:  Boyan Chen (Pixabay)