Social media died – for hours.
Talk about ‘understanding the times.’ Many picked the wrong time to set sail with their goods on Thursday, March 14 2019. Sh** hit the fan. All hell broke loose. Pandemonium ensued. The three largest Social Media platforms – Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram [MarkVille] – went down for at least 8 hours. While users wondered what sort of iceberg hit their beloved vessels, many jumped ship and took to Twitter. Twitter, home of banter, the world’s headquarters for the hottest gist and gossip welcomed them with open arms. FacebookDown and InstagramDown chants filled the air in the way of hashtags, and Twitter influencers had a filled day.
Home to a combined 4.8 billion users, there’s no larger country anywhere in the world. Put simply, if Mark was a President and the subscribers to his SM products were citizens, he would lead a land bigger than China and India.
What was lost?
Millions of companies advertise on MarkVille. In fact, many live there predominantly. They advertise, take orders, ship, restock, run promotions entirely there. When the outage occurred, most running ads simply disappeared – or well, took on Ghost mode. They were running but weren’t leaving footprints. You couldn’t see them. Imagine all billboards and posters taken down all over cities, and all shops shut down. Businesses couldn’t showcase their wares properly, and buyers couldn’t see.
On WhatsApp, it wasn’t as drastic. While you could still continue chatting with the love of your life, it was your voice notes and lovely videos that suffered. You’d have had better luck getting a stubborn cow on a boat.
What caused it?
A glitch. A server outage that’s bound to happen if you run an economy so dynamic, so diverse. Amid the scramble to restore order back to their systems, MarkVille had to resort to its rival, Twitter, to explain that this was being worked on and the nightmare would soon pass.
What if it happens again – this time on a grander scale? What if not just a part, but all of social media dies for more than hours, but days, ever?
It’s not a first. Not a second. And it is bound to happen again. Twitter itself is experimenting with a side product called Twttr in a bid to redesign, overhaul its product.
While liability falls like a lot all around laps for these technological glitches, how is your business preparing to meet uncertainty squarely in the field of future uncertainty?
It may seem highly unlikely – especially as the Worldwide Web hit 30 on 12 March 2019. Somehow, the internet has survived.
But what if some internet-esque electromagnetic pulse hit, and everything was shut down? Or an alien civilization struck and took out Earth’s technology first?
Doomsday scenarios beg for emergency procedures.
What nasty and brutish times await?
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