Facebook Outage Impact on Emerging Market SMBs Just Starting to be Known

Panic, agony, torture, stress – those are some of the words users around the world had to describe last week’s six-hour global outage, from 4 p.m. GMT (11 a.m. ET) until around 10 p.m. GMT on Monday (Oct. 4), during which social media services Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram were down.

In a statement, Facebook apologized to users around the world for the extended outage, which it attributed to networking issues that “had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.”

The technology giant acknowledged “the impact that outages like these have on people’s lives,” which was the worst one the company had faced in over a decade, when a bug caused Facebook to shut down for a day in 2008.

Even though the firm said there was no malicious activity behind the Oct. 4 incident, nor was there any evidence that user data was compromised, the technology outage revealed how vital Facebook and its family of apps are to small businesses in emerging markets, which depend on it as their primary mode of communication with customers and to advertise and sell their products.

Websites: Effective Backup Plan?

Petiti and Co. is one of the many small businesses in Nigeria that was affected by the six-hour-long shutdown of Facebook’s services. According to Sally Saleeman, the company’s head of customer service, the retail business depends heavily on Instagram – roughly 80% of its current customers came through the platform.

“From the point where customers send us the message or make an inquiry up to the delivery point, the communication is often solely through IG — so if it’s down, you can’t contact them and they can’t contact you,” she explained.

The Lagos-based fashion retailer launched in 2016 and has since accumulated over 43,000 followers on the platform, where customers in Nigeria and other parts of the continent, as well as international clients in the U.S. and Canada, contact them to place orders. Payments are made directly to the business’ bank account or using the Flutterwave platform, Saleeman said.

After experiencing a similar outage in the past, the company launched a website earlier this year to reduce its dependence on the platform and to build an off-Instagram presence to reach customers in case of another shutdown. “But even with the website, we still panicked, because we couldn’t market our products or follow up with customers on their orders,” Saleeman said.

In Ghana, French native Fleur Hebras, a French native who runs a bakery and pastry shop, La Boul’ Accra, experienced a similar wave of panic when WhatsApp went down. She was prepared, however, because after a major cable faltered and an internet outage hit west, central and southern Africa in January of last year, she realized she could no longer put all her eggs in one basket. “I knew then I couldn’t depend solely on WhatsApp, and that led me to create my website,” said Hebras, who sells her food products to both individuals and restaurants in the capital city.

But even with a functioning website, she could not escape WhatsApp’s grip on her business. “I didn’t receive any orders the entire afternoon and evening, and the next day, my Excel sheet was virtually empty,” she remarked. For a small business that is used to receiving between 60-70 different orders a day, the impact was quite significant.

Hebras noted that few people use her website, because ultimately it is much easier and more convenient to place an order via the social media platform: “Why would a client bother to order on a website and have to fill out a form with their name, address and contact details, when they can simply order via WhatsApp, add their location and they’re done?” she pointed out.

Moreover, instead of customers driving from Osu to her bakery in East Legon – an 11-kilometer drive that can take up to an hour during peak traffic periods – “to order one French baguette and four chocolate croissants,” they can simply send a WhatsApp message with their location, and five minutes later a motorcycle dispatch rider shows up to pick up the order, Hebras explained.

She added that more and more businesses, even large companies, are realizing that it’s no longer enough to just have a physical outlet, and have seen the need to create a line of communication on the platform, given the proximity it creates with clients.

“I communicate with my suppliers and production teams on WhatsApp, and if it is taken away today, it would really complicate things for me,” she said.

Saleeman’s and Hebras’ situations both show that combining the lifelines and livelihoods of billions of people into a single corporation is a very risky venture, highlighting the importance for sellers to start thinking of alternative ways to manage their businesses outside of the Facebook bubble.

But the jury is still out on how effective any alternative will be, because as of now, surviving without Facebook and its apps seems extremely difficult — or downright impossible — to achieve.