Lessons Learned When Facebook and Instagram Went Down

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Lessons Learned When Facebook and Instagram Went Down

I manage social media accounts for several companies including my own. These are my lessons learned when Facebook and Instagram went down today. At first I thought it was just a user error when I tried to post a story on my Instagram on my cell phone. Then I was getting frustrated when I couldn’t get Facebook to even come up on my computer. 

I started getting texts from friends and bosses so I started the deep dive by heading over to Twitter — I do love Twitter. So I started reading the posts and comments and through a lot of laughing and processing the content ran into the link for the 60 Minutes Facebook Whistleblower episode from last night. After watching it, while I am not at all surprised, I am sad and mad.

I spent some time talking to my blogger bestie and my husband (both active in the social media community for business growth) then sat down to experience my experience.  These are my lessons.

Lesson One – It is not a good idea to base a business’s growth on someone else’s platform.

Gratitude is everything. I am grateful that I have my own website and my own email list. Regardless of the outage, I can still reach my people, share ideas and grow – even in the face of a social media breakdown. I sent an email with the subject line Facebook is down! So Here are 79 Fun Fall Printables and Easy Projects to keep you busy! It has been being opening at a maddening rate. I shared a few of my faves and this post!

Best Fall Crafts Over 75 Ideas

I have been getting email responses that are so fun too.  This is my favorite so far. “Laura, what a cool idea to send an email out like this.  Also brings people back to your website (or in my case there for the first time) it is AWESOME 😉

Hugs,
Zoie”

Lesson Two – Twitter is a TON of Fun

I turned to Twitter for information and found myself laughing completely out loud. People are witty and funny and hysterical. I LOVE the community there and how they creatively express themselves. The memes and the comment and the posts and the photos literally had me in tears. While there were MANY posts I read, this was my favorite – posted from Twitter – “hello literally everyone”.

This is what I posted.

  1. Play Hard on Twitter
  2. Write a Letter to a Friend.
  3. Bake Cookies.
  4. Call Your Family.
  5. Take a Nap.

Lesson Three – Profit Over Safety is Dangerous

I tend to live life through rose colored glasses.  Watching the 60 Minutes episode hurt inside. My dad died this summer. When I think about my dad’s last year alive and the fear he had of getting covid should he leave his home with cancer, I think about the amount of time he spent on Facebook.  He was one of the people who reposted everything he came across that was anti-Trump. No judgment. It is just what he did because he was so angry at the republican party to which he devoted himself for a lifetime.

To think that Facebook COULD HAVE been feeding him healthy content but chose to feed him MORE anger inducing content to make money – I feel sick. I have to wonder how much his health could have benefitted from a healthy feed on a platform where he spent much of his awake time. This quote from Haugen woke me up!

“Facebook over and over again has shown it chooses profit over safety. It is subsidizing, it is paying for its profits with our safety,” Haugen said. “The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world,” she said.

Here is a picture of my dad and a link to more about him. He was amazing.

 

And so I will go on now about my day.  I have some clay to make into Halloween pins and cookies to frost. After that I will call my kids and binge watch some Hulu. Today has been a great big reminder to keep on keeping on regardless of the situation BUT to do it with a willingness to learn and grow.

XO,

Laura

 

 

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