Small businesses took a hit amid Facebook outage

Facebook outage and small business

Small businesses that rely heavily on Instagram and Facebook to drive sales and communicate with customers inevitably took a hit when those platforms went down earlier this week.

NEW YORK - Brooklyn mom and entrepreneur Danielle Delaloye relies on Instagram to drive customers to Sugarloaf, her online baby clothing store.

"I really rely on Instagram — a little bit less on Facebook — but really on Instagram to create traffic on my website," she said.

Facebook's massive outage Monday that also hit the company's Instagram and WhatsApp platforms cost Danielle money and potential customers.

"I had a significant drop of traffic and sales via Instagram," she said.

Light of Gold Public Relations founder Debra Dixon-Anderson said her New Jersey-based business also suffered due to the Facebook disruption because she relies on both Facebook and Instagram to communicate with her clients.

"In my business, I use Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp prolifically and so to my clients," Dixon-Anderson said. "I got quite a bit of emails yesterday from people who were frantic because they couldn't access their groups or meet with clients."

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Tech expert Lance Ulanoff said small businesses around the world took a hit when Facebook went down.

"There's at least 90 million different businesses on Facebook," Ulanoff said. "A lot of them are small businesses — they're running little shops and this is how they connect with customers"

Despite the problems, Facebook and Instagram remain the preferred platforms for many companies. The lure of potentially billions of eyes on whatever you're selling is just too enticing.