Facebook outage throws Regina pop-up business off schedule

As Facebook was losing money during Monday’s global outage, the owner of a Regina business was concerned he could end up losing some dough as well.

Jimmy Schimmel owns HoBo Donuts, a pop-up business with a brand that was built on social media.

“I was just doing the normal morning scroll and then everything just kind of stopped loading,” Schimmel said. “It kind of put me in a panic mode because Mondays are my schedule days.”

At the start of each week, he posts on Instagram and Facebook to let his customers know where the pop-up will be located for the rest of the week.

“Communicating to them where I’m going to be is very, very important when you’re operating a pop-up business. If you can’t communicate that or give enough notice, then that’ll definitely affect your business,” Schimmel said.

Fortunately, he had a grace period and his first pop-up wasn’t until Wednesday. But he likes to give his followers enough time in advance to plan their week and he lost key exposure time online.

Both Facebook and Instagram, along with WhatsApp, were down for about six hours on Monday. It was the biggest downtime for Facebook since 2008, shares closed down nearly five per cent and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth dropped by more than $6 billion.

While the impact on HoBo Donuts wasn’t nearly as severe, every moment on social media is important to Schimmel.

“Everybody’s vying for your time,” he said. “You don’t want to get lost in the shuffle. You really only have a few seconds before you scroll down or swipe to the next story.

“Any exposure is good exposure, especially with something like a schedule.”

On a personal level, he called the outage kind of refreshing. Schimmel went for a walk and spent some quality time off his phone. But he adds it’s good for business to have the platforms back online.

He doesn’t plan to make any changes in the way he uses social media. Schimmel announced on Instagram last week that the business will be permanently closing in January as he changes careers.

“We’re trying to utilize every moment as a precious moment on social media because we don’t want people to forget that we’re not closed now — we’re closing in a few months,” he said.