Facebook Down, World Comes to End

Hundreds of millions of people actually worked today (to their own dismay) due to the unfortunate disconnection of the life juice that is Facebook. For many, hours of countless stalking, telling friends what they ate and living vicariously through other’s lives came to an abrupt halt.

The angry mob across the globe did what any social media addict would do: boost efforts on Twitter by 100 percent. The people in exile found a glimmer of hope in being able to express their loss for the only thing that gave them joy in an otherwise dull and lifeless day.

CC BY 2.0

A quick scan of the #Facebook hashtag on Twitter revealed a nation of people, undergoing the agonizing stages of grief: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance.

Some animal right advocates worried about the health of the animals at Farmville – all those poor helpless creatures with nobody to feed or look after them. Others, confused and suspicious, speculated whether Facebook was testing the loyalty of its followers by finding out who immediately went to Twitter.

Delivering breaking, hard-hitting news as it happens, even CNN covered the outage and delivered the much-awaited apology from a spokeswoman at Facebook: “We apologize for any inconvenience.” Inconvenience? Forgetting to pack your lunch is an inconvenience. For many, the only event that comes close to a catastrophe such as “Facebook down” includes a Category 5 hurricane and/or 9.0 earthquake.

Nonetheless, the CNN post cleared up the cause of the recent outage, citing “technical difficulties,” which was different than yesterday when it was down for problems due to a third-party network provider.

The calamity might have actually affected someone’s life negatively in a real way, as @SecurityHumor on Twitter speculated that someone may have lost a job over this debacle when a new post for Facebook developer hit the Web today.

Aside from the agony experienced by the people who use Facebook for pleasure, there is a valid disadvantage that businesses can have with this type of loss. In SearchCap today, a link to the article, “Facebook is Down, How About Your Website?” brings to light the negative affect this outage can have on businesses. For example, if your website has some integral function that relies on Facebook, it could halt some component of service on your site. So the key is to have a backup plan, says the author of this post.

Currently, Facebook is back, up and running. A tough day for many, but one that I’m sure will be reflected on with gratitude; making people that much more appreciative of their best friend and source of social life, Facebook.

Jessica Lee is the founder and chief creative for bizbuzzcontent Inc., a marketing boutique that focuses on digital content strategy and professional writing services for businesses.

See Jessica's author page for links to connect on social media.