Life without facebook became a reality for hundreds of millions of users on Monday and we’re not sure if it was a blessing or a curse. Five hours of no facebook, instagram, (which I’ve scaled way back on here just have completely stopped posting for the past 3 months, woohoo, what relief) and Oculus (WTF, another one?), whatsapp and messenger seemed like a drop in the bucket for those of us who have scurried from the soul sucking tentacles of social media. However for those who are dependent on it, it was a nightmarish hell that couldn’t end soon enough.
Life Without Facebook
I had a momentary glimpse of happiness and innate joy at the thought of facebook being down, the kind we used to feel when life without facebook was a real thing, but it was short lived. The scurry of engineers and the frenzy to get it all restored and its hundreds of millions of users back on was in full tilt and for those working to restore the apps the nearly six hours were an eternity of sorts.
Last time there was life without facebook was in 2019 when Facebook crashed for 24 hours so this minor in comparison, but catastrophic nonetheless for the millions of people who depend on facebook advertising and whatever other aspects they rely on. WhatsApp is a huge platform for business for the world over. Facebook now calling Monday’s crash a configuration issue. Okay. Yeah. Whatever you say facebook.
The Crash That Stopped The World
The crash took place yesterday and lasted for nearly six hours and sent thousands of engineers scurrying for a fix to what seemed like a stop to the world and a huge bump in the road for the global economy. Apps owned by facebook like Whatsapp also crashed and shook up the world economy bringing a big chunk of it to a mild standstill for what seemed like the longest five hours on earth. The sad irony is that we are so dependent on technology and apps like WhatsApp that the world, our world does seem to end even if temporarily when shit like yesterday’s debacle hits the fan. It came on the heels of a whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimony yesterday in front of a Senate committee. Haugen alleges facebook chose profit over public safety. She claims Instagram is harmful for teens.
Facts And Figures
The numbers are astounding when we truly consider the magnitude. More than 4 billion people in a world of 7.753 billion have a facebook. Now those are some big numbers.
Facebook estimates monthly user ship of around 2.89 billion active users that is making it the largest social media platform in the world. While Instagram has 1.074 billion users. Fun weird fact – the average post on instagram boasts 10 hashtags. #weird. WhatsApp comes in a close second to facebook at a staggering 2 billion active monthly users.
Holy cow.
Super Fun Fact: Based on Facebook’s revenue of $85.97 billion for 2020 alone, the latest outage cost the company an average of $163,565 in revenue every minute. That’s boils down to roughly $60 million based on the nearly six hours of crash time.
I don’t know about you, but I find this fact truly astounding, kind of hard to grapple with, but a clear indication of the enormity of facebook and the magnitude of it’s global impact.
What We Learned During The Facebook Crash
The lesson in it all is a little daunting, sad, ironical even. As much as so many of us may despise facebook in some way shape or form many of us have come to rely on it. We are dependent on it. We are it. We log in daily. Some of us use it for business and it helps propel sales or leads or whatever it is you are after.
The sad truth is we have become fairly dependent on oligarchs like facebook and google and there is little we can do about it. These big wig organizations
We believe we have too much tech on our hands. What do you think?