Points for competition
It is an undeniable fact that Facebook is the lord and master of social media. As the statistics prove, with more than 2.8 billion people subscribed, it is the network with the most active users in the world. The margin with its closest competitor, YouTube, is quite wide, since the video portal has about 2.3 billion users. They are followed by WhatsApp (2 billion) and Instagram (1.3 billion), which can hardly be considered competition by belonging to the same emporium as Mark Zuckerberg.
But it is also a fact that the days when Facebook was the only network are long gone and today there are countless options that help keep in touch. This was the solution of millions of people during the blackout, who, unable to keep up with expectations, turned to other platforms in search of solutions.
Such was the case of Telegram, which became the great winner of the fall by taking advantage of the crisis to gain 70 million users, or as their owner Pavel Durov called them, of refugees. “We will not fail you when others do,” said the businessman, a promise that will not be taken lightly and that could be the necessary boost for the paper plane network to establish itself once and for all in the major leagues of digital communication.
Not to mention Twitter, whose publication of “Hello, literally everyone” two hours after the start of the blackout was celebrated with more than 3 million likes and more than 100,000 comments. A joke directed at millions of users who, unable to connect to Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, they went back to 280 characters to vent their frustration and hang out. More ironic was that Mark Zuckerberg’s own employees also had to use this network to communicate while fixing the problem. An unusual situation, understandable even, but one that has a full impact on the image of both companies.
These workarounds could have a direct impact on the practices of some users, who may have felt comfortable in other networks or who prefer to become familiar with them in case of new problems. Something that would invariably undermine retention times and even loyalty to Facebook.
The drop could also further undermine the interest of potential new users who do not quite connect with the Mark Zuckerberg systems and cause them to opt squarely for other more innovative alternatives. The most powerful is TikTok, which in 2020 snatched Facebook’s first position as the most downloaded network in the world. It barely has 730 million accounts that place it very far from the digital elite, but its frank rise has not gone unnoticed not even by Zuckerberg, who described her as “A very interesting phenomenon.”