On March 5, Meta’s platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads, crashed on a large scale and were fixed shortly. The disruption lasted several hours, but the time was long enough to raise a lot of questions. How serious was the crash? Is it true that people are heavily relying on the platform? What to do to ease the reliance?

Many Digital Marketing firms told VietNamNet that they suffered heavily from the crash. If Facebook collapses, advert channels and fanpage systems with tens of millions of users collapse. 

Also, the Facebook’s accounts used to connect with TikTok and platforms that allow logging in with social network accounts will also be affected.

In this case, the Facebook crash caused Instagram to break down, resulting in a loss of 50 percent of views from social networks.

Nguyen Duy Vy, the founder of Buzi, which operates in digital marketing, said that the Facebook crash seriously affected the firm’s performance. 

The company had to postpone the implementation of contracts signed with clients. It had to send information to clients who ran ads at the moment of collapse to explain the reasons behind the interruption, because it affected the KPI of projects.

The internal communications were also affected. Officers have the habit of using Facebook at work and they had to use other platforms (Zalo, Viber…etc) instead of Facebook.

Tourism suffered heavily from the breakdown, especially eco-tourism, such as camping services.

According to Thuy Do, the owner of La Ngau Camping, 99 percent of clients of this type of tourism are from Facebook. After their trips, travelers post stories to share their experiences among their groups, which serves as good advertising. 

Le Vuong Thinh, CEO of Formula Racing Vietnam JSC, which provides racing services to clients, said the company uses various platforms, including Instagram and TikTok, websites and Zalo, but still relies on Facebook because revenue from the ads accounts 40-50 percent of total revenue. 

While media, tourism and service companies have suffered heavily from Facebook crashes, technology firms and retailer were unaffected. 

Nguyen The Kha from FPT Shop said, like other businesses, FPT Shop uses Meta’s services. However, the disruption of the social network on March 5 had little impact on the retail chain. FPT Shop always keeps standby channels for emergencies and doesn’t depend on an information channel.

Technology firms said they were not seriously affected by the crash, because they all have communications and advertising channels of their own that have contact with clients.

Many people thought that the crash would cause troubles to KOLs, because Facebook is considered KOLs' livelihood, but it was not true in all cases.

Nguyen Ngoc Duy Luan, a famous KOL, told VietNamNet that the spread of new content to users on this social network was affected a little, but nothing changed with revenue.

Tran Hiep, an administrator of Tinh Te Forum, said that the Facebook crash simply means that people lost a place where they could gather to gossip.

Singers, rappers and some artists also said they could use other channels.

HDVietnam’s administrator Bui An said if Facebook collapses, KOLs would switch to other channels such as YouTube, TikTok, Telegram and X (Twitter). 

The only problem is that they have to make effort and spend money to rebuild their channels. KOLs know how to attract autidences with posts, videos, comments, reviews and streams. And their fans will also shift to other platforms to follow them.

A report released at a recent event held in HCM City showed that Vietnam has 72.7 million Facebook users and 67.72 million TikTok users. The figures are 63 million for YouTube and 10.9 million for Instagram.

Trong Dat