While the Facebook company's social media was down, the internet gathered on Twitter - and the short message service, of course, played along.
San Francisco - It felt a bit like an internet lockdown.
Instead of not being allowed outside the door, Internet users were prevented from spending their time on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The social media were not available for almost seven hours, and because of the sparse messages from Facebook and Co., nobody knew when the services could be used again.
However, since their own platforms were not accessible, Facebook and Co. had to inform their users about the competing company Twitter.
The short message service was the big winner of the evening and could look forward to countless new registrations.
"Hello everyone, literally," tweeted his own account and received over three million likes for it.
hello literally everyone
- Twitter (@Twitter) October 4, 2021
pic.twitter.com/DhoAlovouj
- تركي الثابت (@ tut2b) October 4, 2021
The tweet was commented on over 116,000 times, with many global corporations bustling around to join in the discussion and to respond in a funny way.
For example, McDonald's took an order for 59.6 million chicken nuggets, Adele reported to the enthusiasm of the company and WhatsApp and Instagram also wished everyone a “Happy Monday”.
Numerous memes that Twitter celebrated simply for availability were also posted.
59.6 million nuggets for my friends
- Twitter (@Twitter) October 4, 2021
Hi and happy Monday 😵💫
- Instagram (@instagram) October 4, 2021
👋 hello!
- WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) October 4, 2021
But Twitter was not only enjoying high traffic under its own tweet.
The failure of the Facebook group was discussed under many hashtags, the hashtag #facebookdown alone generated over 1.3 million tweets.
Millions of short messages were also posted under #whatsappdown, #InternetShutdown, #Zuckerberg and #Telegram.
To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry.
We've been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now.
Thank you for bearing with us.
- Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021
Facebook itself tweeted during the failure that it knew about the problem and was working on a solution.
The Zuckerberg Group then apologized for the damage caused.
WhatsApp wrote after midnight that they were 100 percent online again, thanked the patience of the users and said they were delighted at how many people around the world would trust the service.
We're now back and running at 100%.
💚 Thank you to everyone around the world today for your patience while our teams worked diligently to restore WhatsApp.
We truly appreciate you and continue to be humbled by how much people and organizations rely on our app every day.
💚
- WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) October 5, 2021
pic.twitter.com/4VjyYFfRuh
- Javier🇺🇸🇲🇽⚾️🏴☠️ (104-54) (3-1) (@ Javierr_06) October 5, 2021
The incorrect change in the network configuration, which is said to have caused the Facebook failure, has not only strengthened Twitter as a consequence.
The Facebook share suffered enormous losses and founder Mark Zuckerberg himself is said to have lost six billion dollars within a few hours, according to the financial service Bloomberg.
Twitter shouldn't care about any of this - even if it's questionable whether all the new users will stay with the little bird in the long term or join Instagram and Co. again.
In the case of WhatsApp, there were enough other competitors who were happy about the failure.
(ta).