Mark Zuckerberg loses $3 billion after Facebook, Instagram global outage
After a major global outage hit Meta’s social media platforms on Tuesday, March 5th, 2024, impacting billions of users, the company lost an estimated $3 billion, according to a report by India Today.
The stocks of Meta closed in red down 1.6 per cent at USD 490.22 during March 5 trading session according to NASDAQ.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder, chairman and CEO of Meta, lost over USD 2.79 billion in a day to USD 176 billion in his new worth, as per Bloomberg Billionaires Index, but he maintained his position as the world’s fourth-richest person.
According to Reuters, Meta’s status dashboard showed the application programming interface for WhatsApp Business was also facing issues. There were around 200 reports of outages for WhatsApp on Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources, including users.
Just as Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Messenger platforms faced global outage for over 30 minutes leaving users struggling to log into their accounts, Elon Musk took a jibe at Meta in a post on X. Several Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger platforms experienced login issues. The issues were being reported from across the world, suggesting that the outage could be global.
Taking a jibe at Meta, Elon Musk said, “If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working,” prompting immediate reactions from users on X, a platform formerly known as Twitter.
In February 2024, the Facebook co-founder’s net worth surged by USD 27.1 billion after Meta’s quarterly results far exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, sending its shares up about 20 per cent. He became worth USD 169.5 billion, the richest he’s ever been, and surpassed Bill Gates to move into the fourth spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Meta announced a quarterly cash dividend of 50 cents a share for Class A and B common stock beginning in March. With Zuckerberg holding about 350 million shares, he would take home about $175 million in each quarterly payment before taxes, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.