Zuckerberg’s Personal Wealth Takes $29Bn Hit as Users Flee Facebook
'People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time'
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Social media giant Facebook is seeing its daily users flee the platform at a rapid rate, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg taking an astronomical hit on his personal wealth.
“People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly,” Zuckerberg said, per The Washington Post.
Facebook reported a drop in daily users of almost 500,000 over the last three months.
Zuckerberg said that Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is now working to develop its short-form video Reels in an attempt to compete with TikTok.
“This is why our focus on Reels is so important over the long term,’” he added.
Meanwhile, Facebook shares plunged more than 20 percent after heavy spending on its Metaverse led to a decline in profit.
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Meta experiences a 22.6 percent fall in stocks to $249.90 in after-hours trading, wiping out $200 billion off the company’s market value.
Zuckerberg, who is worth approximately $107 billion, held over 398 million shares of Meta at the end of 2020, Investopedia reported.
Zuckerberg personally experienced a more than $29 billion loss when the company’s stock fell Wednesday.
Figures reveal Facebook lost over $20 billion on Metaverse projects over the last three years.
As The Daily Mail reported:
The data also revealed that consumers are being less interested in the Facebook platform, specifically in Africa and Latin America, where the loss of daily users was greatest. Some analysts allege this shows the product may be globally saturated.
Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings reports also indicate the platform’s user growth has stalled in the US and Europe, a trend witnessed over the last several years.
However, Facebook previously made up for the stall by adding new users worldwide.
While the decline in daily users could suggest the Facebook marketplace is saturated, analysts note Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger continue to add users.
The company saw a growth in the number of users logging into Facebook monthly, despite the decline in daily users.
The platform also reported a slightly higher revenue per user amount.
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Meanwhile, Facebook has made significant investments in its virtual and augmented reality hardware ventures, including hiring more than 10,000 people to work in the Reality Labs segment and rebranding the company to Meta.
“Last year was about putting a stake in the ground for where we are heading; this year is going to be about executing,” Zuckerberg said Wednesday.
Last year, Facebook was accused of facilitating the spread of misinformation during the 2016 US presidential election, prompting a series of congressional hearings and policy changes.
The changes included the introduction of third-party “fact-checkers,” which have created further allegations of political bias and censorship on the platform.
As Neon Nettle reported:
In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion for allowing 87 million US profiles to be harvested for information used for political advertising by British firm Cambridge Analytica.
