Tech platforms, brands on a roll as FaceBook, WhatsApp, Instagram crash

Facebook and its social-media platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram, suffered one of the worst outages in recent times on Monday night. Netizens quickly migrated to alternative platforms to stay connected with their contacts.

Brands had a field day on Twitter during Facebook’s nearly six-hour-long crisis. Popular tech platforms and brands kept tweeting tongue-in-cheek posts or memes, with Whatsapp and Instagram taking the trolling good naturedly, and responding with humour.

Twitter takes charge

Twitter, on its official handle, said: “hello literally everyone”. Within minutes, response to this thread exploded. Instagram said, “Hi and happy Monday”, with a spinning-eyes emoji. WhatsApp said, “hello!” with a hand-wave emoji, to which Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey, responded: “thought this was supposed to be encrypted…”

Also read: Outage highlights how vital Facebook has become worldwide

Fast food giant McDonald’s asked, “hi what can i get u”, to which Twitter replied: “59.6 million nuggets for my friends,” while Burger King asked Instagram: “u ok, bestie?” Meanwhile Amazon’s Alexa said: “I don’t have hands so I’ll just say Hi five times... Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi!,” whereas Microsoft Teams posted: “*unmutes mic* hey everyone”.

A few screenshots of brands interacting on Twitter during Facebook’s nearly six-hour long outage

Indian brands, too, quickly joined the meme and tweet fest. Zomato posted: “it’s ok instagram, surviving mondays is tough. cc - whatsapp.” Swiggy tweeted with an eye-roll emoji: “WhatsApp and Instagram both down. Kitni baar fridge check karu? (How many times should I check the fridge?).” Reliance Jio posted a grinning face with sweat emoji, saying: “No it’s not the internet, stop refreshing your chats #WhatsAppDown.”

Netizens also shared screenshots of app notifications from e-commerce firm Myntra that said, “WhatsApp & Instagram have crashed. So have our prices. FLAT 80% off @ Big Fashion Festival.” Kotak Mahindra Bank marketed its loan scheme with a tweet, “What do WhatsApp, Insta, Facebook, and Kotak Home Loan Rates have in common? They are all down.”

Also read: Former Facebook manager criticises company, urges more oversight

OTT platforms also grabbed the opportunity. Amazon Prime Video India posted a meme captioned “meanwhile twitter”, based on the Hindi film Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, where Jaya Bachchan’s character waits for Shah Rukh Khan holding an ‘aarthi thali’. Netflix also posted a meme, based on its newly released hit Korean show Squid Games. It shows a character from the series labelled as ‘Twitter’ dragging another person marked as ‘everyone’.

Rivals thrive

Rival messaging platforms made hay. Encrypted messaging service, Signal said, “Signups are way up on Signal (welcome everyone!) We also know what it’s like to work through an outage, and wish the best for the engineers working on bringing back service on other platforms #mondays.”

Instant messaging platform Discord also witnessed high traffic. When a user wrote: “A good time to invite all my WhatsApp contacts to @discord”, Discord tweeted back, “We welcome all newcomers.” It had earlier tweeted, “having a good time being online”.