Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has dropped $5.1 billion in mere hours it has emerged.
The Facebook founder was hit hardest by the company’s stock dropping almost 7 per cent on Monday.
Zuckerberg’s net worth now stands around $69.5 billion following the erasure of $37 billion in market value.
Forbes reports:
After another public relations debacle for Facebook—in which a Trump-affiliated data firm was accused of improperly gleaning information on more than 50 million users—the company’s stock plummeted nearly 7% through 1 pm Eastern Time on Monday, erasing $37 billion of market value.
The decline had the biggest impact on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s cofounder and CEO, whose net worth fell $5.1 billion.
They added:
Zuckerberg, who owns about 16% of Facebook’s shares, is now worth an estimated $69.5 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time rankings of the world’s billionaires.
He is currently the seventh-richest person on the planet, down from fifth, after falling behind Zara cofounder Amancio Ortega and Carlos Slim Helu, Mexico’s richest person.
In January, the Zuck was reported to have lost $3.3 billion thanks to changes to how Facebook operates.
He explained:
We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us.
But recently we’ve gotten feedback that public content – posts from businesses, brands and media – is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.
Based on this I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.
They believe that Facebook is facing a phenomenon known as ‘context collapse’ which basically means that as users share less about themselves online the data that Facebook sells to advertisers becomes less valuable.
By encouraging people to once again share personal information on the site they may be able to increase Facebook’s commercial value.
