Zuckerberg loses nearly $7b in hours as facebook plunges

The social media outage impacted millions of people across the globe, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself.

Mark Zuckerberg lost nearly $7 billion as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp remained down for several hours, reports DNA India. 

The three social media applications, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, were not in service for nearly six hours, resulting in one of the longest social media outages in history. Due to this outage, Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of all three platforms incurred major losses.

The CEO lost around $7 billion and slipped to the 5th spot in the billionaires’ list as the three apps remained down for hours. Now, Zuckerberg’s net worth stands at around $121.6 billion, and he has dropped below Bill Gates in the billionaire’s list.

Prior to the global social media outage, Mark Zuckerberg ranked at the 3rd spot on the list of billionaires across the globe, and now, he has dropped to the 5th spot. According to media reports, the stocks of Facebook fell by 5 per cent on Monday, adding to a 15 per cent decline since mid-September.

Earlier today, Mark Zuckerberg addressed the global social media outage on Twitter. He said, “Apologies to everyone who hasn't been able to use WhatsApp today. We're starting to slowly and carefully get WhatsApp working again. Thank you so much for your patience. We will continue to keep you updated when we have more information to share.”

The Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram outage had several stories attached to it, including a hacker and user data breach. Facebook then issued a statement that said that the outage was a result of internal network issues in the company’s server.

Microblogging site Twitter and messaging app Telegram saw an influx of activity as soon as the servers of the three major social media apps went down. Twitter was buzzing with memes and theories attached to the outage, though the exact cause was not known until after the services were restored.