Frustration, anxiety, and restlessness are what most experienced as soon as the world realized that Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were down.
The biggest outage since 2008 they say.
Back in 2008, a bug managed to halt the entire Facebook platform for an entire day, affecting almost 80 million of its users.
Let’s face it, there’s no need to feel overwhelmed or hyper vent realizing that most of the tech giants like Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon govern important aspects of our daily lives.
So much so that they have penetrated so deeply into the social fabric of our society that we can’t just do without them anymore.
Sending a WhatsApp to your wife informing that you’ll be home late or curiously stalking your boss or colleague when they’re off on their vacation – is a routine practice.
But it doesn’t just end here.
Businesses around the globe are dependent on such platforms now more than ever.
From SMEs to big corporations – verified account of political entities to major e-commerce businesses — are leeching followers and profits from these very platforms.
Yes there is talk about Zuckerberg losing 7$ billion after the shares of Facebook hit a new low but let’s be real, does this really matter to him?
What matters in this case scenario are small companies and enterprises that are vulnerable to such ‘technical glitches’, losing valuable time and hard-earned money due to technical fluctuations in a system that ensures the survival of these businesses.
Has This Happened Before?
We mentioned in the earlier section regarding the outage that took place in 2008.
But that’s not all.
In 2018, Facebook experienced another setback when a rare outage occurred across this social network sites like Facebook and Instagram.
Though this time with a fairly less magnitude, as it only affected users in the U.S and some parts of Europe and South America.
Similarly, in December 2020, Google managed to disrupt SEO rankings because of its core update, resulting in multiple website owners losing substantial traffic on their sites.
How Did Facebook Respond?
Well without giving us much of a reason as to what led to this outage – Facebook simply and ironically used Twitter to respond to its users by stating “working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.”
This is more of a rapid response to assure its users that the issue is being dealt with.
Following up on their conversation on Twitter, the below response was issued by Facebook to apologize to its users:
What Triggered This?
Well, to be honest, no one really knows since Facebook did not clarify as to what prompted this.
There is obviously speculation and we can let you in on that.
Most tech websites claim this to be a major DNS mishap.
Domain Name System records suddenly becoming unreachable due to configuration issues.
Some also claim it is due to the fact that Facebook had withdrawn the BGS (Border Gateway Protocol) route containing the IP addresses of its DNS nameservers.
While DNS issue may be a symptom of the problem but is not most certainly the actual problem
Others, including us, know that there’s something much more serious and which is unknown to us.
Who Gained From This Outage
Twitter centainly lost the social media leader war, but in this case, it certainly won the battle.
The official Twitter account immediately took notice of this and indirectly trolled its competitors, have a look below:
With this act suddenly all other brands joined in the conversation whereas most users began to unleash their dislike (NOT HATE) for platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram with their savage tweets.
Even Jack Dorsey couldn’t hold back when a user posted a (FAKE) screenshot of Facebook domain being auctioned, he was quick to throw in a witty reply:
Personally I feel in this entire episode LinkedIn was treated like a middle child and was neglected.
Not many people acknowledge the fact that LinkedIn is one social media platform that continues to promote positive messaging and has somewhat of an uplifting vibe.
A Lot of content generated on LinkedIn helps people find useful information which is not just limited to finding jobs, but exploring new skill sets and connect with people that are always offering/willing to help just for the sake of helping.
Though some features like the search can be improved but overall the people behind LinkedIn continue to improve the applicability of the platform as well as most of its features.
My personal new favourite is adding your own voice on your profile that allows a person to introduce themself through a voice message, how cool is that!
To sum this blog up, let us know through your valuable feedback what your most favourite social media platform is and why, helping us get new insights as to how the majority thinks.
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See, at the heart of it – I love solving problems for people using tech, it doesn’t get simpler than that.
I am known for constant experimentation and relentless execution.
If I have an idea, it better have a .com at the end of it within the month.
Right now – my focus is to help everyday folks of Pakistan understand tech, career, and business better with everything I do at SK NEXUS
