On the 4th of October, which was a Monday, Facebook and its other two social media apps

saw an outage for 6 hours. Outage created a lot of chaos worldwide. Millions of users worldwide
who highly depend on these apps for their earnings were affected severely. Here is a report by
DMS Analytix about how different people were affected by this outage, how they managed it,
and what they are likely to do if such outages become frequent in the future?
Impact of WhatsApp Outage on local grocery stores/Supermarket or Small Business
Questions asked to owners
Q1) When did you start selling online or by using the platform?
Q2) What platforms do you use to sell your products?
Q3) What payment methods options do you provide to your customers?
Q4) Was your business affected by the social media outage? If yes, then how?
Q5) How did the workers in the shop affected by the social media outage?
Q5) What kind of precautionary steps did you take to tackle such outages in the future?
While discussing with the owner the following things which I noticed
 In covid time They formed a WhatsApp group of their customers for convenient home
delivery.
 Nearly 30 Percentage customers still preferred WhatsApp for orders even though
restrictions are removed.
 Owners observed a sharp decrease in the number of orders during outage time.
 A higher percentage of customers who visited the shop created chaos. Workers in the
shop faced difficulties in managing all increased number of customers
 Many delivery boys worked in the shop during the outage,
 Many customers tried to give orders through calls and SMS, but due to
miscommunication, both owners and customers felt lots of problems
 In some grocery shops, delivery boys collected written delivery orders from customers
and delivered the orders.
 Some of the customers faced difficulty in paying money through WhatsApp. Money of
many of them got stuck in a transaction during the outing.
Precautionary steps by Owners to deal with such future outages
 Formed telegram group of customers
 Some Owners shared 4 to 5 mobiles numbers with their customers to manage more orders
during outage time.
 One of the owners was also in the thinking process to create a site for his Store
  With the outage, one lesson that the users have learned, especially those who use these
platforms to grow their business, is not to have all the eggs in one platform. After the
situation, many users will surely try to mark their presence on other platforms too.

The second category of people ( working professionals who are working from home in
this Covid time)
Questions asked

1. Which Industry do you work in?

2. Do you use WhatsApp for work-related things?
3. What is your occupation?
4. Which other platforms do you use for office work?
5. Was your work affected in any way during the Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp
outage? If yes, then how?
In discussion, it was observed that working professionals in the MNC or software-based
company were not affected that much( 70% of them not affected ). They can connect with
their colleagues through many apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Skype, and
Outlook. Most of them used WhatsApp for informal conversations only.
80% of teachers were affected by this outage. Most of the teachers use WhatsApp to convey
information or to share notes and for doubt solving. Attendance of students on that day was
affected and decreased by 20%. Some of the teachers took the help of Gmail and Google
classroom to convey the information.
Three teachers/Professors contacted their schools/colleges for a Microsoft Teams
subscription.

The third category ( Social Media Influencers )

The collected information is from the post, Interviews, and articles published in the
newspaper by the influencers
In an interview with The Indian Express, Neha Puri, CEO and founder of Vavo Digital, an
influencer marketing company, said, "Influencers that had 250k+ views in general, received
only 5k views on their posts due to the Facebook outage."
According to Ankit Agarwal, founder of Do Your Thng, a creator-first tech platform,
If small content creators fail to post sponsored content on the scheduled hour, They can equate
to no or delayed payment. Most of the influencers didn't post on that day.
Most of the content creators who are freelancers contacted their organization and explained
the issue. After news spread worldwide, many content creators got their payments.