When Facebook Inc (Meta) went down on October 4, Twitter lit up. Everyone rushed to the bird app to hang out, so we dropped a Tweet from @Twitter to say hi to all of our friends, old and new.

The outage was one of the biggest news stories of 2021, and our real-time response not only blew up on Twitter but became an indelible part of popular culture.

October 4th, 2021.

Facebook. Instagram. WhatsApp.

All went down. For six whole hours.

So we lit a 24-character beacon of light, welcoming the masses to Twitter and starting a conversation with literally everyone with a single Tweet.

For this particular convo, we knew instantly that the audience was broad and global.

As in, EVERYONE who uses Twitter daily AND everyone who RARELY ever uses Twitter but was forced to use it on October 4th because they couldn't get on Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp for 6 hours.

So we knew we had to go broad and keep it extremely simple. We knew the context was well known because it was trending 1 globally, so we didn't need to repeat it or set up the joke.

For our Tweet, we didn't want to just dunk on Facebook Inc, as that world be bad form. So we played the other side. We simply welcomed everyone to our platform. We had a chance to say something to an audience we rarely get to speak to, so we took it. We said hi hoping everyone would say it back. And they did.

We spend a lot of time on the timeline, so when a conversation emerges, we ask “How big is the conversation? What’s the vibe? Should we be in it or do we let it do its own thing?"

In this instance, we decided that since a great deal of the conversation on Twitter around Facebook Inc (Meta) going down was actually centered around Twitter, and that the majority of the Tweets were lighthearted, AND that it was happening globally, it was definitely the right conversation to join.

And since we are Twitter, we knew all we needed was one Tweet.

One Tweet. Three words. Twenty four characters.

That's all it took.

The moment we hit send on that Tweet, it went flying, picking up 100,000 likes in less than 10 minutes, and over 1 million likes within hours.

The likes and RTs came flooding in, and almost every single brand on Twitter dropped into our replies, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and McDonald's. And Adele dropped by to say hello.

By the end of the day, the Tweet became the 2nd most liked Tweet of 2021 (globally!), the 6th most liked Tweet of ALL TIME on Twitter, and was featured on Good Morning America, the Late Show, and the cover of the New York Times.

After 48 hours, this one 3-word Tweet had 22 million total engagements, 175 million impressions, 775,000 Retweets/Quote Tweets, 115,000 replies, and had brought us 580,000 new followers.

And as Twitter, we were able to demonstrate that few things in marketing are more powerful than a simple, well-timed Tweet.