Ask the Expert: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp Down – What This Means for You

On Monday, October 4th around 10:30 AM CT, Facebook-owned platforms – including Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp – were reported as experiencing outages according to Down Detector. Facebook confirmed the outages soon afterward.

On Monday, October 4th around 10:30 AM CT, Facebook-owned platforms – including Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp – were reported as experiencing outages according to Down Detector. Facebook confirmed the outages soon afterward. 

While the sites are down, they are not serving ads, so we do not anticipate charges during this window. It is also important to note that until the platforms resume, we are not able to pause, launch, or optimize campaigns running through the Facebook Business Manager. The outages also mean that we cannot access platform reporting or even post organically.

TraDigital™ Marketing Expert and Chief Operating Officer at MHP/Team SI Lannie Byrd helps break down what this outage means, as well as how it impacts our clients.

Which Platforms Are Down?

• Facebook
• Instagram
• WhatsApp
• Oculus
• Other sites/services that depend on Facebook for login- like Eventbrite.

Why Are These Platforms Down?

• As best as we can tell it’s Global DNS outage for Facebook- Domain name service
  • DNS translates a domain name like Facebook.com or Instagram.com into an IP internet address which represent a server on the internet.
• We can speculate that this is malicious and a hacker has done this because we’ve seen similar DNS attacks in the telecommunications and communications world in the last few weeks.

What Does This Mean For My Business?

• If you are using Facebook’s advertising service then your ads aren’t serving and no one is seeing them which means you aren’t paying for them. With Facebook and Instagram, you only pay when someone sees your ad.
• If you normally use Facebook to communicate with your clients/customers you can shift those messages to other channels like your own websites, email, LinkedIn, Twitter,  TikTok or Pinterest depending on who your audience is and where they spend their time.
• If your site is down or running slow you need to have your developers remove any embeds from Facebook or Instagram or login functions related to them. This may include temporarily removing the Facebook Pixel in your Google Tag Manager.

What Are the Long-Term Impacts?

• This outage along with other whistle blower news related to Facebook last week and over the weekend is definitely going to affect Facebook’s reputation and usage as the most popular social media platform. 
• It would be natural to see some people quit using Facebook or their usage drop-off significantly

At MHP/Team SI, we have a team of strategists working to know who your audience is and how they consume media including their changes in media consumption caused by events like this. We follow the trends and make recommendations for advertising spends and communication channels to make sure our clients maximize their marketing efforts.  

We’ll keep following this Facebook outage and keep you up to date on what’s going on.