The Day Facebook Went Down

Do you turn on the television and watch the morning news when you first wake up or do you pick up your mobile phone and start scrolling through your Facebook feed to see what your friends did yesterday? If you answered "Facebook" you're not alone.

Have we become a society that has become too reliant on social media? Are we addicted to Facebook or do we have a Facebook habit? 

For many small businesses, including mine, Facebook has become an office in the workplace. Since I don't have a brick and mortar I rely heavily on doing business on Facebook. From paid advertising to posting items for sale, Facebook has become a catalog for our customers. 

So, needless to say, the day Facebook went down for a few hours I had a small panic attack. How was I going to get my customers signed up for my next event that was happening in just a few days? How was I going to update the graphics on my page?

So many questions and concerns were running through my head but then I stepped back and realized that if I couldn't get on Facebook then no one else could either. I was at a standstill. My business which is run mainly through Facebook was at a standstill. Now what?

In the years before Facebook, my day would've started with reading a newspaper and calling the local radio station to start advertising on air for the next few weeks during peak listening hours or "drive time." I would've copied and pasted a poster and taken it to the library to make copies to hang up on bulletin boards at local businesses in hopes that somebody would walk by and see it and show interest in my products and events.

Digital technology in the workplace has broadened our customer base but on days like the day Facebook went down it did my business no good. 

With Facebook and Instagram being down, "This led to a smug post from the social media site’s owner Elon Musk, who wrote. “If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working” (O'Flaherty, 2024).

References:

O’Flaherty, K. (2024, March 7). Facebook and Instagram down-here’s why. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2024/03/06/facebook-and-instagram-down-heres-why/?sh=4d8161e64f3e