Meta loses $3 billion in outage, Zuckerberg's net worth drops: Report

Meta, the parent company of popular social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, suffered a significant setback on Tuesday, March 5th, 2024, as a global outage struck its services, resulting in an estimated loss of $3 billion, according to a report by India Today. The outage affected billions of users worldwide, leaving them unable to access their accounts.

According to the report, Meta's stock took a hit, closing down 1.6% at $490.22 on NASDAQ during the trading session on March 5th. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Meta, saw a substantial decrease in his net worth, losing over $2.79 billion in a single day, bringing his total worth to $176 billion, as reported by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Despite this loss, Zuckerberg maintained his position as the world's fourth-richest person.

Reuters reported that Meta's status dashboard indicated issues with the application programming interface for WhatsApp Business, with around 200 outage reports on Downdetector. The outage affected various Meta-owned platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and Messenger, leaving users unable to log in for over 30 minutes.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, took a dig at Meta during the outage, posting on X (formerly known as Twitter), "If you're reading this post, it's because our servers are working," which garnered immediate reactions from users.

This setback comes after Meta experienced a surge in Zuckerberg's net worth by $27.1 billion in February 2024, following better-than-expected quarterly results.

With Zuckerberg holding approximately 350 million shares, he stands to gain about $175 million in each quarterly payment before taxes, according to Bloomberg data. Despite the recent outage and financial losses, Meta remains a dominant force in the global social media landscape.

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