Unless you’ve been living under a rock this week, you’ll know that Facebook vanished from the internet on Monday. The global outage, which also hit Facebook-owned apps WhatsApp and Instagram, lasted around 6 hours. 

Did you miss me?

The disruption was its own fault. During routine work, engineers made the wrong computer command causing an issue with the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) - which is often described as the post office of the internet. Facebook essentially removed itself from the map of the internet while its infrastructure was down.  

This single point of failure highlights just how monopolised online communication channels have become. 

For business owners, having one company control so much of the world’s digital social infrastructure meant being unable to sell or communicate with customers for almost an entire working day during the blackout.

While Monday’s outage is indeed a powerful argument in favour of splitting up the social media platforms, more importantly, it serves as a reminder that your digital strategy shouldn’t be solely dependent on these apps. Those with multiple touchpoints with their customers were probably the same brands joking on Twitter, instead of panicking at the prospect of hours in the dark.

Like the once-powerful marketing tool, Google Plus and the ahead of its time, MySpace, Facebook could one day also be consigned to Room 101. 

Facebook was only down for 6 hours, but would your business survive if it disappeared from the face of the internet for good?  A recent paper from McKinsey Quarterly is a timely reminder that every business – however small – needs a digital strategy.