Managing Multiple Crises: Facebook Case Study

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that crisis comes for everyone. But having to deal with one crisis won’t keep others at bay.

Indeed, in this age when heavily mediatised critical events are right around the corner, addressing multiple crises at once has increasingly become the norm. Just ask Facebook.

On most days, it’s good to be the social media giant. After all, the use of Facebook has become routine to its 1.84 billion daily active users (DAUs)i. Meanwhile, 2.8 billion are monthly active users (MAUs) of the platform.

eMarketer reports that nearly 60 per cent of social media users are reached by Facebook. In the U.S. alone, over 60 per cent of the country’s 12-plus population use
the platform.

And those users tend to be sticky. According to DataReportal, users spend an average of 19.5 hours on the Facebook app each month.

Facebook turns a pretty profit, as well. The company reported netting USD 27.2 billion in ad revenue in the final quarter of 2020, bringing its yearly haul up to USD 84.2 billion, up 21 per cent from the prior year.

It’s not hard to understand why. Digital marketers love Facebook. Seventy-eight per cent of U.S. consumers have discovered retail products to purchase on the platform, according to Kleiner Perkins.

As a result, businesses, particularly small businesses, compete to make their Facebook presence known. More than 200 million small businesses around the world use Facebook tools.