Entry no: 2021SMF6539

REPORT ON HOW DIFFERENT GROUP OF PEOPLE MANAGED THE SOCIAL OUTAGE BY DMS ANALYTIX

INTRODUCTION:

Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram applications saw worldwide outage on 4th October,2021, for two hours.
After that, these social media applications went down again in the same week for more than 6 hours for the
first time in the last 2 years. Though the CEO admits that it was a technical glitch and the reason for both
outages was different, it created chaos worldwide as more than 3.5 billion people use those applications
regularly. The world realized how much we rely on social media applications, whether for entertainment,
business, or data transfer. Major groups affected economically, socially, and psychologically are small
businesses, employees, social media influencers, some logistics companies, etc. Many researchers reported
millions of losses due to 3 application outages showing the importance of digital technologies on our daily lives.

DMS Analytix carried out a small analysis on how people from different groups acted during this social media
outage. Also, the analysis covers users' perceptions about their reliance on some applications and their actions
if a major outage becomes frequent in the future.

The first group of people (Small business owners who use these platforms for business operations)

Today, most of the information's regarding day-to-day business activities is shared by WhatsApp group as more
than 50+ people are engaged with those activities. Everyone needs to access live reporting regarding the same.
To analyze how they managed these activities during WhatsApp outage, we reached out to Mr. Mahesh Jasani,
who owns a small textile mill business. Their daily business involved communications with different local
vendors and transportation owners. Mr Mahesh belongs to Surat, Gujarat. He started his business recently in
2020. So, their firm is already working with fewer resources. The following questions were asked during the
semi-structured telephonic interview,

• Which kind of business operations are involved on WhatsApp and Instagram?

• What were your quick decisions after hearing about WhatApp Outage?
• How did the Social Media outage affect your business? Is there any monetary or non-monetary loss
that occurs?
• How did your worker communicate day-to-day information with more than 30+ co-workers?
• How did you manage your day-end reporting to various stakeholders?
• Do you believe there should be an alternative for WhatsApp business accounts?
• Did other small businesses or competitors face same problems?

Analysis based on the interview:

• Most of the communication regarding daily tasks and checklist was shared to WhatsApp groups of
workers and they will be prepared their job activities according to that.All workers sent their hourly
update and process parameters into WhatsApp group.
• Mr. Mahesh first tried to find for how many hours WhatsApp would be down. After that, he first
reached out to the factory manager and asked him to announce that all data will be recorded on paper
and submitted to the desk after capturing the photocopy. He distributed point of contact, who would
manage ten workers' activities and track their positions until WhatsApp started working again. He
announced some rewards for those point of contact so they could perform well.
 Entry no: 2021SMF6539

• Another challenge faced by Mr. Mahesh was with transportation as addresses were shared on
WhatsApp group with all the details who would deliver where. Though it was a late hour and most of
the delivery was done, it could have been worse if it was daytime.
• Other small businesses did not face same problems as they were established a long time ago so, they
managed data entry and sharing on an online cloud platform.
• For now, Mr. Mahesh has started some crisis management mock drill in the factories to prepare. Also,
they are looking for consultancy who can guide them with crisis management like COVID or digital data
theft or social media outage.

The Second group of people (Working professionals who use these platforms, especially WhatsApp for their
work activities)

After COVID, employees shift to work from home and some of the manufacturing unit employees reduce their
physical contacts and start to communicate through social media applications. To analyze how they managed
their work during social media outage, we carried out a semi-structured telephonic interview with two people.
One of them is Mr. Nishant Soni, who works in Reliance Industries Limited's manufacturing unit and handled
20+ workers. Another one is Ms. Vani Darji, who works from home with IT firm. Following questions were asked
to them during the interview,

• What kind of work-related activities carry out through WhatsApp?

• Are there any other social media or company-provided applications available?
• How did the Social media Outage affect your work? Also, rate severity on a scale of 10.
• Was there any chaos among the workers who were given information through WhatsApp? Is there
any impact on work efficiency?
• Did you feel helpless during the social media outage?
• How did you manage the work without WhatsApp?
• Did you prepare any strategy if this incident occurs in the future?

Analysis based on the interview:

• Work from Home employees faced few challenges as most of the work was done through MS Teams
or Zoom, but it was difficult to reach out to those who are working from other countries.
• Employees who worked in plant faced challenges for monitoring data which field operators shared
through WhatsApp.
• Work efficiency was reduced as employees could not communicate all information or tasks at one
instant to all workers. During outage they had to tell individually, which resulted in chaos for a while.
Though employees have access to the enterprise messaging application, most of them were not aware
of how to communicate. Based on a scale of 1-10, severity was 7.
• In order to avoid any chaos in the future, employees have started to increase awareness sessions about
the usage of enterprise applications and develop standard work practices which will be less dependent
on one application only.

From the above analysis, it can be concluded that social media outage impact different category of people
differently. However, for most of them, it was a shock. They realized how much they are dependent solely on
social media. There are many opportunities to diversify the reliance of the work on different digital
technologies. The present challenge demonstrates the need for government and socially vital parts of the
economy to encourage businesses to spread their operations across multiple platforms in order to cushion the
economic shock of another outage.