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Facebook, Instagram outages hurt small businesses

Many users log onto social media to reach customers and sell products, so an outage can cause thriving businesses to stumble a bit.

BELL COUNTY, Texas — In case you didn't know, social media giants Facebook and Instagram, along with their sister platform WhatsApp were down for the majority of the work day on Monday.

They platforms came back online shortly before 5 p.m. CT Monday evening, but the outages was felt across the world.

RELATED: Facebook and Instagram back online after hours-long global outage

Obviously it slowed down a lot of people who'd be posting their weekend highlights to the platform of their choice today, but it could hurt networking and business operations for some.

"I know social media marketing a lot of people like to use it because those applications are free," said Dapspring Fowler, owner of Fowler Communications.

The platforms are helpful for business owners, but reliability is not too promising.

"Facebook and Instagram being down is a big deal," Fowler added.

With two of the biggest social media platforms being down, Fowler's sole purpose for her company was in a bind.

"Social media is very much a part of my daily work, on my social media marketing company, and with that I manage accounts for my clients on Facebook and Instagram," she explained.

Not being able to post or share when living in a digital world isn't ideal, whether it's personal or business.

Especially for the millions of users who use it to promote business, and make sales.

"I definitely think that a lot of companies are using social media, a lot more these days," Fowler said.

One of those companies, a local food truck, is Coney's Bur-Gour-Met & Buns.

"I use it probably like 80 percent of my business," said Erik Coney, owner of the food truck.

Coney said he depends on social media for a thriving business.

"The first day of the week we pay for ads and we post every single day," he explained. "We have a social media presence where we interact with our customers."

It's important for Coney to post, especially being in the mobile food truck industry, hopping around to different spots around Central Texas.

"This is how we inform customers when we move that will be gone from four to eight today or we'll be back tomorrow," he said.

He said that's how the food truck brings clients to different locations.

Social media outages show how much businesses thrive off the platforms and what could happen if it were long term.

6 News even had struggles with daily work when the platforms were offline. News Reporter Baylee Bates had to switch stories Monday morning as she couldn't get in contact with a Central Texan via Facebook.

   

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