How Will Your Business Be Affected If Facebook Stops Working For 24 Hours?

Facebook, in the recent decade, has become one of the most powerful social media tools. From building a product to breaking a brand, all it takes is a few clicks to yield smart search results. It is amazing how every major brand has created its own virtual presence and capitalized on this new hub of market survey.

In fact, in a recent discussion with this friend of mine, it came to my knowledge that nowadays every start-up entrepreneur is first making a virtual impact on this social portal and after analyzing the feedback is moving on to the later infrastructural and managerial investment- now that’s what I call “Impact”. The Impact this blue page has made on everybody’s life- be it getting reviews on new products to launching of something cool- it is out there for the world to first set eyes on, decide and then go for grabs- consequently, making it time friendly for the consumers and investment friendly for the production houses.

So, while considering Facebook to be such an important and integral part of product launching, it suddenly dawned upon me- What if one fine day Facebook stops working? What if it disappears? What if it is banned in India, the way it has been in some of the countries lately? Would it affect our social life? Or maybe networking life? Our professional life? And most importantly how would it affect our business?

Back to the basics

So the first logical after-effect that came to my mind was resorting to status-quo! Exactly, how hard could it be to go back to the time, when Facebook was not in existence? And that is when it occurred to me- the phenomenal amount of investment in terms of market survey, advertisement, marketing and public relations that this social media portal has provided companies with. It would again take a bloody battle to get the best market gurus into the team and brainstorm on the most efficient advertisement campaigns.

There would no more be peer reviews of the hottest brands or the coolest accessories- each one would be one their own. And the worst set back would be suffered by the small budget start-ups. May be they would go back to sleep for a whole day and wake up to find their guardian angel back into the servers to make that rocking start to a promising product launch.

Looking for Alternatives?

The next most logical aftermath would be looking for an alternative social media platform to give the same exposure to a brand as Facebook did. Sounds easy enough? So what are the options that we have? Twitter is one, but with such a stringent word limit I wonder how effective the communication with the world would be. I mean, it is great when the word starts trending, but a lot of work needs to be done to hit that block. Most importantly companies need to be precise about what they want the audience to read.

Looking at other options, we do have Google+, the new social kid on the block, but given Google’s latest search engine optimization that has thrown the world off guard, we wonder how much time it would take for the internet giants to figure out the tool to feature on this media zone. We do have individual company blogs but then again, to make consumers look into them in the first place, is a big issue to ponder on.

Marketing and Advertising

The two sectors, which are the most crucial for any business, namely marketing and advertising, would be the worst affected if Facebook stops working. Nowadays, all that is needed to make a product launch successful is to update smart one-liners and a product picture and spice it up with some goodie voucher offers, and within seconds the 'likes' and comments make it reach the newsfeed of the target audience and definitely some prospective audience.

A brand page in Facebook is like the party thrown by the most popular girl at High-School, everybody would be there. Thus, if Facebook vanishes for just one night, the drop in the popularity meter would be enough to kill a new brand and sabotage the goodwill of another, it is almost as disappointing as seeing the “Under Construction Page” on any company's official website, that’s how important the Facebook page is for your brand.

Last but not the least on a lighter note, a lot of people would become jobless! No kidding, honestly the digitial marketing gurus and those capitalizing on this new-found money-plant would face a major set back if things start going back to the old-school ways. So, for the betterment of one and all, we just hope that Facebook keeps working without a crash of servers and the world continues to be a better place to live in!