For these Instagram-only business owners, Monday's outage was a rude awakening

For most of the billions of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram users around the world, Monday's outage was annoying.

But for Holly Rockbrune, it was something much more serious. That's because she and business partner Jenna Parkes use Instagram, the social media platform owned by Facebook, to run Jolie.tte, an online boutique selling French vintage and antique items to their customer base of 35,000 followers.

Founded in 2019, the venture has grown swiftly, and Rockbrune says it's on track to make roughly $250,000 in net sales this year. But that came to a screeching halt when Instagram went down, because Jolie.tte operates exclusively on the platform.

From marketing and sales through to customer service, Jolie.tte's whole operation went temporarily kaput around noon on Monday.

"When the power went out for Instagram, everything shut down," Rockbrune, who lives in Toronto, told CBC News in an interview. Monday is typically a busy day for the store, which releases new items twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the partners usually spend the day before promoting what's coming up.

"We couldn't post any of our teaser pics, which is hugely detrimental," she said. "It really is our sole means of advertising to get people excited to come to our online shop to buy things."

Even worse, Jolie.tte uses WhatsApp — also owned by Facebook — to communicate with its marketing agency, and the messaging service was offline for much of the day, too.