When Facebook was down, Twitter was up

Amidst the worldwide Facebook outage, people turned to Twitter to share their thoughts and jokes with each other
Tech Desk | October 05, 2021

A limited number of users around the world who tweet in English can now add a "Tip Jar" feature to their profiles. PHOTO: AFP

Amidst the worldwide panic when Facebook and its sister applications stopped working, people turned to Twitter to share their thoughts and jokes with each other. The application was flooded with new and old users trying to stay online and connected with others, while Twitter proudly embraced users flooding onto the site by tweeting, “Hello literally everyone”. The simple tweet gathered 2.4 million likes in just four hours of it being posted.

— Twitter (@Twitter) October 4, 2021

Other major brands jumped on the bandwagon and recognized the social media company’s marketing coup, like Mcdonald’s replied to the tweet with “hi what can I get u”, to which Twitter responded, “59.6 million nuggets for my friends”.

— Twitter (@Twitter) October 4, 2021

Other companies like Netflix used this as a great opportunity to market their new series, “Squid Game”, using a picture from the series to form a meme about Twitter, while Microsoft poked fun at video conferencing meetings. Celebrities like Dolly Parton also tweeted memes to join in the #Facebookdown trending on the app.

— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) October 4, 2021

Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, posted a video later on Instagram, calling out Facebook for dominating the internet by buying out all the social media applications they perceived as potential competition. She called out for support to end the monopolisation of internet and digital commerce. She also said in her caption for the video that “I feel a need to use code words and emojis to describe their competitors so this post doesn’t get immediately nerfed by FB’s algorithm”. She provides examples of Facebook reels and Stories feature to kill the clock on applications providing the same services.

 

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