WHY DO SOCIAL MEDIA GIANTS CRASH?
Social media is a platform that connects people around the world. It is a web that makes the world a global village. It allows you to reach, share, shop, earn and most importantly, convey and communicate no matter where you live. Social media giants like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc., enable you to share and receive information. Think, how many times a day you visit these platforms and spend a significant time on these websites, sometimes for information and sometimes for entertainment.
Dependency on Social Media
According to statistics, approximately 3.6 billion people are using social media. Social media giants not only keep you updated, but it is also an enormous source of earning and doing business. Thousands of people around the world buy and sell goods through social media. Millions of skilled professionals can establish their businesses worldwide to earn through these platforms. The functions we perform through these social media giants and our daily reliance on these giants make us vulnerable and dependent.
Interestingly, there is no age limit for users on social media. People of every age use these networks according to their interests. It will not be wrong to say that the world revolves around these social media giants, and now it is inconceivable to live without them. Following demographics show active users of different social media giants and their age group:
| Social Media Giants Demographics
for 2021 |
Tiktok | |||
| Active users (monthly) | 2.7 billion | 1 billion | 187 million | 100 million |
| Male | 56% | 43% | 68% | 41% |
| Female | 44% | 57% | 32% | 59% |
| Highly active age group | 25-34 (26%) | 25-34 (33%) | 30-49 (44%) | 18-24 |
| Usage time | 38-40 minutes | 29-30 minutes | 3.53 minutes | 45+ minutes |
The above data shows that there is an overwhelming population of youth that uses social media giants. It must be noted that almost every individual has all above mentioned social media giants installed in his/her smartphones. Moreover, people are using social media apps to create online casino accounts, such as at Vulkan Vegas.
The World got Silent
An era in which one cannot comprehend life without social media giants, there came a time when all the activities on these platforms came to a halt. In October 2021, massive reports of social media giant crashes were reported. People around the World went turbulent to find their social media Apps out of service. Such an out-of-service mode of social media applications made us realize the level of addiction of these giants. Downdetector, which traces social network failure, reported that around 10 million people got their inconvenience recorded. The number of affected people was indeed much higher. People were out of contact with each other; even the simple task of sharing documents seemed frustratingly tricky.
Additionally, people who live abroad cannot connect to their friends and family, whose only way of communication is this social network. The failure of social networks was also a financial hit for the people with small online businesses. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp all giants apologized to their customers for the inconvenience. The specific reason for the crash remained unknown for some time. On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg apologized by saying that:
“Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger are coming back online now. Sorry for the disruption today – I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about.”
Reason for Social Media Giant Crash
Though Facebook and Instagram immediately started to work on the ongoing problem and tweeted to calm their users that they were working to resolve the issue, the reaction of users was astonishing. Later on, Facebook stated that indeed it was a technological problem. During their regular maintenance session, an issue was triggered and created a problem for most people to upload or view pictures or for some to log into their accounts.
Another reason is that these ”always-on” platforms are expected to function all the time for the users, so it becomes impossible to analyze and work on potential risks of failure. According to experts, the constant pressure on these platforms makes it impossible for them to repair and maintain. Some security experts declared that the company’s DNS (Domain Name System) had vanished. This DNS directs the users to the company company’s website.
The outage of social media giants paved the way for a number of controversies. Some critiques share their suspicion that it was a publicity stunt and Facebook and other giants elevated their number of users through this outage. On the other hand, this service failure provided a kind of opportunity to other software companies to question the reliance and hegemony of some giants. For example, Rasmus Andersen says that Facebook should not have been allowed to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp. This singularity in ownership leads to severe consequences such as dependency on one company.
Point to Ponder
In short, the incident of social media giants’ outages made us realize that this technology has made us eager and impatient. Yet, those were also humans who had been using traditional ways to connect with each other from long distances and were used to staying connected that way.