Technology
Facebook Falls Over Zuckerberg’s brainchild has been through a tough time recently. As it rebrands to Meta to ward off reputational damage, here’s a look at some key figures for Facebook.
LEADERBOARD
Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune dropped by $5.9 billion to $117 billion following the outage.
17 Facebook Inc. was founded 17 years ago in 2004 in Massachusetts by Harvard College students Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.
$19 billion WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum. According to Forbes, the instant messaging app was acquired by Facebook in February 2014 for $19 billion, making it the largest Facebook acquisition to date.
On October 4, 2021, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went down across the globe for more than five hours, affecting over 2.7 billion users. The outage reminded the world how vital the three social media platforms have become, with individuals, communities, businesses, and economies affected. According to Facebook, the interruption was caused by “configuration changes on the backbone routers.” There was another quick outage a week later on October 8, but it didn’t last long, didn’t affect all users, F O R B E S M I D D L E E A S T.C O M
and didn’t appear to have a dramatic impact. Here’s a glance at some important numbers for Facebook.
2.7 billion Over 2.7 billion users were affected when Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went down for five hours after a massive outage on October 4, 2021.
$5.9 billion According to Forbes, as Facebook’s stocks declined by about 5% after the outage, Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune dropped by $5.9 billion to $117 billion following the incident.
$65 million Forbes estimated that the company may have lost nearly $65 million in revenue, as ads weren’t delivered during the outage.
14hrs The last big outage was for 14 hours back in 2019, according to the BBC. In its early days back in 2008, Facebook went off for an entire day, according to CNBC.
$1 billion Instagram was founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. It was acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for $1 billion in cash and stock.
60 Minutes Former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, turned whistleblower in October 2021, telling CBS’s 60 Minutes that she believed the social media giant had contributed to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and added that it puts astronomical profits over people. NOVEMBER 2021
BY MOHAMED RASHED ALKHALIFA ; PHOTO BY BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP
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