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Snow day or doomsday? Social media managers had mixed opinions on the Facebook outage

“Social media managers have all come to Twitter to have a bit of a snow day while the other networks are down.”
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Facebook experienced what was likely its largest outage in the company’s history on Monday, which meant that Instagram, Whatsapp, and even Facebook’s literal front doors experienced outages, too. For the social media managers whose primary marketing channels are Instagram, Facebook, or those doors (free out of home idea to anyone who wants it?), the blip—which lasted about six hours—garnered mixed reactions.

“Social media managers have all come to Twitter to have a bit of a snow day while the other networks are down,” Nick Martin, social listening and engagement strategist at Hootsuite, told Marketing Brew on Monday. Chi Thukral, head of content and sustainability at Yanko Design, the design magazine, told us that her peers were all celebrating—“except for one of my friends who has to redo a whole ad set.”

“It’s like Facebook gave us a mental health day,” Thukral said.

But while the “snow day” camp bragged about the levels of engagement their personal outage tweets were getting (meta, we know) other social professionals (like that ad set’s victim, probably) were exasperated.

“It’s creating a massive amount of stress,” one social media manager who deals only in organic content told us. “Fall is the busiest time for my industry, and many others, having to shift a full day and editorial calendar is a nightmare,” she continued. In reference to her champagne-popping contemporaries, she said that she wished she could feel relieved. “I have so much to do, but I can’t do it,” she told us.

Others found themselves somewhere in the middle of the two camps

For instance, BlueVine social media manager Lolitta Tracy said that, at least on the organic side, the outage made the day less stressful because it resulted in fewer inbound messages to answer. “We snapped out of the FB/IG bubble we’re in and are reminded that there’s more to the internet,” she said. But on the paid side, Tracy told us the day was disruptive to some important “timely targets to meet.”

Some just counted themselves lucky the incident didn’t fall on a busier day for their company. “Luckily, we didn’t have any large pushes going out today. I’m sure it’d be stressful if that were the case,” Morgan Playle, who manages some of Nike’s organic global social media at the agency Laundry Service, told us. “If there were a new product launch, then I would definitely be stressed,” Daniela Rodriguez, social media lead at Family Meal agency, added.

Bottom line: Jerica Deck, social media associate at Girls Who Code, may have put it best, saying that she honestly felt both more stressed than usual and like she got a break. “It definitely changed my plans but it was kind of like getting a snow day,” she told us, in a reminder to us all that sometimes snow days can be indeed, kind of stressful.

Get marketing news you'll actually want to read

Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.