How does your team keep in contact at work? If you said Slack then you probably know their site crashed for an hour recently. Sometimes, this causes people to run amuck complaining on any social media platform that will listen. Ironically, the opposite occurred today when their website crashed. Thousands of users rejoiced, relishing in their newly found free time while at work. Score!

Twitter was set ablaze, with hilarious tweets being fired from the hip. I realized as I was scrolling through that this company had managed to create a massive amount of positive free advertising simply by crashing for a short period. Everyone was talking about it, posting memes and funny gifs explaining that they didn't know what to do with their newfound freedom.

I highly doubt that this was a calculated move to get people buzzing about what Slack was, and why everyone was talking about it. However, you can bet that other platforms will try to recreate their success. Will they be just as successful or will they face a wave of angry customers?

Here are a few of my favorite tweets detailing the debacle:

What is Slack and how do you use it? Well, think of it as a place where your team, important information, and conversations all occur. This keeps everyone on the same page, increasing productivity and organization.

I've seen Slack groups for both professional and personal use, and have even been invited into a few groups hosted by group chats that started on Facebook but needed a more structured set up to flourish. It is definitely an easy to use platform that allows you to quickly engage with your co-workers, friends, or anyone else in your group with ease.

Why did Slack go down?

Users were struggling to connect to the platform, thus not being able to get in touch with their team. The platform was only down for an hour while fixes were made (and updated throughout the process via their system status page for all to see). It's almost as if all entrepreneurs and the business world in general forgot they could continue to communicate via e-mail or even a quick phone call.

Perhaps they just needed a break, but it's a good lesson in regards to having a back up plan for when things don't go as planned. I've found that having a "Plan B" is never a bad idea, because putting all of your eggs into one basket is generally not a great idea.

Is there a member of your group who can contact everyone to update them on the protocol for staying in touch with your team when something unexpected happens to your usual platform? Now might be a good time to create a spare list of contacts for safe keeping.

Unfortunately, the fastest growing business app ever is back up and running and users are stuck actually doing their jobs now, but it was fun while it lasted. One thing is for sure, you can't beat free word of mouth advertising in 2018.