Yahoo Finance Mark Zuckerberg just got $15 billion richer: This is why
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta (formerly Facebook) CEO, added just over $15 billion (US$10.7 billion) to his personal wealth overnight, bringing his total net worth to $103.4 billion (US$73.6 billion), according to the Forbes real-time billionaire tracker.
Zuckerberg managed to make more money overnight than most people would ever see in a lifetime after his company reported its quarterly earnings.
Shares of the social media giant were up more than 14 per cent despite missing revenue expectations, as investors and analysts digested the company’s plans to scale back spending.
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But, despite not making as much money as analysts expected, Meta’s Facebook app was once again adding users - something it hadn’t been able to achieve for some time.
Users increased 4 per cent to 1.96 billion daily active users after the app lost 1 million last quarter.
Focus on the metaverse
All this came after Meta saw an incredible downturn in the wake of falling user numbers and a host of controversies around the company’s impact on users.
The company was slammed upon the release of the Facebook Papers, which detailed internal memos and research at Facebook claiming the social media giant was not only aware of the hate it’s platform perpetuated but also it had taken the active decision to not stamp it out.
Following the controversy, Zuckerberg announced Facebook would rebrand to Meta and focus on building the metaverse.
Zuckerberg said while the company continued to invest in the metaverse under its Reality Labs business, monetising its family of social apps was still a priority.
Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp.
“On the Family of Apps side, I am confident that we can return to better revenue growth rates over time and sustain high operating margins,” Zuckerberg said during Meta’s earnings call.
“In Reality Labs, we're making large investments to deliver the next platform that I believe will be incredibly important, both for our mission and business — comparable in value to the leading mobile platforms today.
“I recognise that it's expensive to build this. It's something that's never been built before and it's a new paradigm for computing and social connection.”
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