It didn’t start with us. It started in other places around the world. The UK, Canada, Turkey, and large metropolitan areas in the U.S. were hit a Facebook and Instagram outage that lasted 14 hours. Everything from Facebook Business Manager accounts, Instagram Business accounts, ad accounts, WhatsApp, and more - all went down.
Fortunately, by the time the outage hit our HQ in Oklahoma, everyone had already completed most of our work for the day.
Around 3 p.m., confused looks starting crossing the office as doom-and-gloom messages flashed across our screens.
“We’re sorry, but something went wrong. Please try again.”
Empty Instagram profiles.
Weird glitches such as sponsored ads that had reactions and comments - but didn’t allow you to be able to react or comment.
^^Us.
Around the time we were performing our usual “fix-it” procedures, we received an email from Facebook.
It’s official. Facebook and Instagram are down. When Facebook emails you about an outage, that’s when you know. It’s not coming back up anytime soon.
We had finished what we needed to have done for the next few days, so…what to do?
FIELD TRIP!
Where to? The library, of course!
“.....wait. Don’t you guys, like, live off of computers?”
First of all: We live off of computers and coffee. Very important to remember.
Secondly: Research is a massive part of being in the social media and online marketing fields! We spend an average of 10 hours per week performing research to make sure we’re always up-to-date on the latest trends, statistics, recent articles, and more.
We loaded up and were library-bound, which was an awesome change of pace for us. How many companies get to go on spontaneous field trips?! (We do.)
In the end, we walked out with eight fabulous books.
Creativity, Inc., Ed Catmull | Invisible Influence; Everyone Is Reading It!, Jonah Berger | Instagram for Business For Dummies, Herman, Butow, Walker | Fascinate, Sally Hogshead | Contagious, Jonah Berger | Relevance, Andrea Coville | Hit Makers, Derek Thompson | The Strategic Storyteller, Alexander Jutkowitz
When something you rely on crashes, get creative. There is always something you can do - there are always resources at your disposal. We pulled together and found them!
What did you do when Facebook and Instagram shut down? Let us know in the comments!