Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram are back online after a global outage turned us all on our heads this week! Being locked out of our accounts for hours caused great concern. In one way, it can be sometimes good to have a break from our phones and social media, but from a business perspective not so much!
When it comes to business, having all eggs in one basket may not always be the wisest decision. In the online world, we can become quite dependant on various platforms to help us to advertise our business. I would not advise using only Facebook/Instagram and running all of your business from these platforms. For example, if you are running an eCommerce business, and solely reliant on Facebook as your only platform to run your shop, this can be risky. Your entire business is dependant on Facebook continuing to do business as they do at the moment. Government intervention and regulation could force Facebook to change and this could severely impact your business.
On days like yesterday when we have no access to our business accounts, this can be dangerous. You can grow your business quite successfully using these platforms but it is always safer to consider other options also.
On a more positive note, Facebook and Instagram are excellent options for online business with the use of ad campaigns, thus increasing sales.
Here is a list of other options to help you open your business to the world:
1 Owning your own website and hosting your website with a reputable company
2. Shopify is a great option for online stores or WordPress (WooCommerce)
3. Blogging
4. Twitter
5. Tiktok
6. Linkedin
7. YouTube
8. Google My Business / Google Ads
This week’s outage also locked people out of any website which they had used “Log In With Facebook” to access. Thousands of websites use the log-in options (known as SSO, Single Sign-On) of Facebook, Google, or Apple, which is convenient but can result in your users being locked out when those major players go offline, as we saw yesterday. This 2020 report from Wired points out why you should think twice before using Facebook, Google, or Apple to Sign In Everywhere: https://www.wired.com/story/single-sign-on-facebook-google-apple/
