[abkumar]

> this outage probably cost them just over a million bucks

I have always wondered whether it is accurate to think about it like this. It sure is interesting to know how much companies make in revenue per minute, but it doesn't necessarily 100% translate to lost revenue in an outage.

For example, if I wanted to purchase something on Amazon, but the retail site went down I would not visit another site to purchase it. I would just wait until the site came back up. In that sense, the revenue isn't lost just delayed.

[derefr]

That works with e-commerce, but not necessarily with advertising. If you were going to browse Facebook during lunch in the office (and be shown ads), but Facebook is down, then you won't necessarily just "browse Facebook later in the day instead." You weren't on Facebook to catch up; you were on Facebook because you had nothing better to do.

[greglindahl]

This is definitely true, I expect that users will spend a bit less time on Facebook today.

However, Facebook doesn't have a 100% fill rate of high value ads, so during the rest of the day they'll be showing somewhat more expensive ads to users, earning a higher average revenue. That will make up for some of the loss, despite lower usage.

[a13n]

For e-commerce that argument makes sense, but not for advertising.

They lost 30 minutes of primetime eyeballs from tens or hundreds of millions of people that would have seen ads but didn't.