PRZEMYSŁAW PIETRZAK

TO: XXXXX

FROM: YYYYY

SUBJECT: Facebook going out of service for over five hours – background and consequences

DATE: 16.10.2021

INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this report is to capture recent events related with Facebook which had an
immense influence on various processes especially those closely related with social media and the
functionality of the inner Facebook structures. The report is based on the article from The Economist
“Gone in Minutes, Out for Hours: Outage Shakes Facebook”. I have divided the report into main
sections regarding the core issue and conclusions/summary section.

BACKGROUND
The recent Facebook error which occurred on Monday around 11:40 eastern time as the
users reported and lasted for over five hours has unveiled how dependent the world is on the social
media platforms and how severe may the consequences of such events be to ordinary people’s lives
as well as businesses. Such events seem to be uncommon (last one happened in 2019) but always
remind us that even giants are to some extent prone to technical defects. This time it was the
infrastructure coordinating the traffic between Facebook’s data centres that failed.

When it comes to reach of Facebooks and other popular communication apps it is estimated
to be around 3.5 billion of people who use it for day to day communication with other users. What is
more many business rely on online marketing with use of social media. Moreover it is known that
multiple electronic devices or online services are with to Facebook. Hence a ripple effect on all these
dependent elements of the bigger net was not a surprise.

RESEARCH FINDINGS
Facebook’s problems amassed
Even though technical problems has hit Facebook and dependent entities these are not the
only ones. The company has been strongly criticised as a former product manager of Facebook –
Frances Haugen has disclosed some data proving that Facebook is ignoring the harm that is caused
by its mechanism like low self-esteem among teenage girls exposed to Instagram. She is scheduled to
testify on this case in Congress.

Business models in shambles

As it is commonly known many businesses rely on social media as the basic tool of reaching
out to customer. In accordance with the basic material it is possible to list out a few individual cases:

 A start-up founder Mark Donnelly in Ireland running HUH Clothing says that those few
hours caused lost measured in thousands of dollars.
 Samir Munir an owner of a food-delivery service owner in Dehli was completely
paralyzed because of an outage.
 Douglas Veney a gamer earning money via Facebook Gaming depending on views and
subscriptions couldn’t function.
 Difficulties inside Facebook
As it has been already presented the Facebook has to deal simultaneously with many
problems at once and perhaps the most severe one is related to its internal system. First of all
employees had troubles communicating. Secondly problems with entering some buildings and
conference rooms occurred. Thirdly scheduling tools failed. Finally engineers who were to assess the
outage couldn’t get into server areas.

The solution appeared as a team of employees was sent to manually reset company’s
servers.

ANALYSIS OF THE POSSIBLE REPERCUSSIONS

The recent outage has shown to many entrepreneurs that their business model is not
necessarily stable. It means that the following aspects of leading a business may be affect in the
future:

1) Online marketing especially via social media

2) Communication among employees may deteriorate
3) The influx of information gathered by Facebook to companies
4) Inner planning system may go down if it is based on tools provided by Facebook
5) Any business providing streams on Facebook

On the other hand there are also repercussions of non-technical problems of Facebook and
involving long term influence on humans behaviour. When it comes to this set of problems as their
repercussions for businesses we may outline:

1) A new marketplace for sustainable social media with regard to its influence on the
human race.
2) Possibilities of running campaigns related to mental health and supporting switch in the
law making Internet a better place. It may allow them to present them in a positive way
and gain recognition.
3) The awareness arising from some controversial practices of Facebook may create an anti-
Facebook movement creating a possibility for the business to actively support it and
promote their services.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

As we are living in social media era the businesses cannot avoid interaction with them and it
is more frequently the case that they are building business models completely reliable on Facebook.
That is why it is necessary to scrutinize this relation and prepare for possible troubles caused by
Facebook.

In case of the future outages I would recommend to undertake some actions to prepare for it
in advance. Obviously this advice is not aimed at microbusiness not having enough funds to separate
their business model from Facebook. For instance wort a consideration would be:

1) Diversifying ways of reaching out the consumer. For example creation of a dedicate app.
2) Switch to other ways of communication of employees as there exist multiple
communication apps.
3) To insure against possibility of future outages of Facebook.
4) Always permitting consumers to contact via e-mail.
 Concerning making use of Facebooks bad reputation related with its influence on new
generation my advices would be to:

1) To take advantage of rising awareness of social media worrying influence and participate
actively in the creation of new type of social media.
2) Create counter-addition apps and services.