The outage of social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp on October 4, 2021, lasting for a total of six hours, brought us back – believe it or not – to sending SMS messages and using some long-forgotten networks such as Skype.

Surely, after who knows how long, you sent someone an SMS just to confirm that WhatsApp was “bugging” and that you actually wanted to continue your conversation. However, almost none of us were aware of what was going on, and even if we could have guessed what was happening, how could we share it with others when the most visited social media platforms were not working?

In just those six hours, the world seemed to stop, and you could not easily reach your friends, audience, or target group. The only option left was Twitter, which, although very popular, still cannot compare with the aforementioned networks.

In the continuation of this text, read about how this short-term social media outage affected us as users, as well as many whose businesses partially or entirely rely on these platforms.

Facebook as an excellent place for alternative sources of information

The importance of social media for exchanging information is evident from the fact that, for a full six hours, those who follow various portals on social platforms as alternative media sources had no way to instantly connect with like-minded people and access the information they needed.

Imagine a world in which, hypothetically, there were no platforms like social media – useful as channels for the flow of information that we cannot see or hear on television. In this particular case, we still had Twitter, but what if even that had not been available, and after all these years, we had to return to SMS messages and television programming?

Whether it is our fault or not, have we become addicted to social media as a communicative and informative channel? It is certain that, at least to some extent, each of us feels the need for them.

How the social media outage affected small businesses

The market on social media is quite large, and there is practically room for everyone who knows how to segment their audience and position themselves in the eyes of consumers. Small and medium-sized businesses have been using this opportunity for years to very efficiently and precisely reach their customers.

In today’s world, it is difficult for small and medium enterprises to compete with the big players in the market, and they have found salvation in social media as excellent communication channels. These platforms require certain investments in advertising and agency services, but they certainly do not require owning the massive infrastructure and everything else that the largest competitors possess.

On October 4, for a short period, something happened that surely gave many young and growing companies a reason to worry. Of course, it was somewhat assumed that Mark Zuckerberg and his team would restore everything to normal, but what if they hadn’t?

We can only speculate about this hypothetical and almost impossible situation, but the fact remains that many companies would have lost a lot of money and would have been forced to seek new communication channels to reach new customers.

What this outage meant for influencers

We are aware that many businesses – from large corporations to small firms with only a few employees – base a good portion of their marketing on social platforms. But what about influencers, who, roughly speaking, would lose their identity and the audience they had built over years?

Influencers are a very powerful tool through which companies achieve influence and advertise products, services, and ideas. But not only that, they are in themselves a significant factor in the marketing market, as they have the ability to independently build a large community around their ideas, opinions, or something entirely different.

Thanks to social media, anyone can become a person of influence if they have something intelligent to say, do, or offer. Success – that is, the number of followers – will be proportional to the quality of what an influencer has to offer, as well as to the audience they address.

The social media outage briefly left us with the chance to think about how much poorer the world would be without the opportunity to express our talents, opinions, or anything else in this way. With social platforms, each of us can easily find like-minded people, regardless of whether we have them in the real world around us.

This reveals an undeniable dependence on social media – both from the side of influencers and from regular users – and whether that is a good thing remains an excellent topic for contemplation.

Psychological perspectives on the influence of social media

Not so long ago, in 2015, scientists from the Pew Research Center – like many before them – sought to investigate the phenomenon of the negative impact of social media on users. The fact is that users expressed their negative opinions on social media itself, which may have been the very impetus for many studies to determine whether the problem lies in the social platforms.

We can freely say that they exert a significant influence on people, but if that influence is negative, perhaps the problem lies within people themselves. It is up to us, as users, to filter the information we encounter on these platforms and to understand that, alongside the digital world, there is also the real world.

With proper education, social media cannot cause real problems. On the contrary, for years they have been excellent platforms for connecting people and spreading ideas to support those who are socially and economically disadvantaged. Many people find words of encouragement and comfort here when they have nowhere else to turn.

After all of this, it remains truly questionable whether those who claim that the social media outage should have lasted forever – and that the world would be a better place without them – are correct. For years, we have been living in the era of digitalization, and social media is just one small segment of that. The fact is that the world is advancing and that in the future many things will take place virtually, so we must learn to live wisely in line with that and make the best possible use of the existence of social platforms.

If you yourself wish to distribute content, services, and products through advertising on social media, by hiring a professional digital agency you will be able to find your audience in the best possible way. A digital marketing agency is at your disposal for social media management services.

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