Facebook’s Worst Outage Since 2008: What Really Happened?

Our Head Of Paid Divya Patel explains What On Earth Happened when Facebook stopped working and sent the world into a panic. 

Social media quickly burst into flames yesterday as Facebook, and its owned platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, went dark in a global outage that lasted for around six hours. Spokespeople for the company confirmed last night that it was a result of a configuration change to its routers and not of a hack or attempt to get at user data. Basically, it seems Facebook’s machines just weren’t able to talk to one another. Facebook also took a major hit when it comes to marketing. Standard Media Index reported that Facebook was losing about £400K in ad revenue per hour in the US alone during the outage. Shares of Facebook also fell by 4.9%.

Yesterday’s outage serves a gigantic reminder for brands to have proactive contingency plans in place within their digital strategy. So here’s what we recommend brands should put in place moving forward:

1. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

You need to reassess how much of your ad spend is concentrated in a single marketing platform and look to expand your social strategy. Are you overlooking Pinterest, TikTok or Snapchat? 

2. Tracking measurement and optimisation

Comparing yesterday’s performance against last Monday’s won’t be feasible – your ad performance benchmarks will have to account for this outage.

3. Prepare for the next outage

Yesterday's Facebook outage wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last. Create ‘if’ scenarios and what actions will need to be taken to solve those situations. Being agile is key.

If you’re looking to ring fence your digital strategy and ensure your social accounts always have a backup plan, speak to us today for a multichannel solution for your brand.