Mark Zuckerberg loses USD 7 Billion in hours

New Delhi : Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth dropped down by nearly $7 billion in a matter of few hours, dropping him down to the fifth spot on the list of billionairs, according to Bloomberg’s Scott Carpenter.

Soon after Facebook-owned companies like Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook itself went offline for hours. Zuckerberg with a total wealth of $121.6 billion has fallen behind Bill Gates.

Previously, he was at the third spot on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.  According to Bloomberg, the stocks of Facebook fell by 5% on Monday, adding to a 15 percent decline since mid-September.

On Monday, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger went down for millions of users, including in India, on Monday evening, as they were unable to send or receive messages on social media platforms. “We are aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” Andy Stone, Facebook communications executive said in a tweet.

On Tuesday morning, Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the glitch and assured that the services were coming online.

According to DownDetector, a website that tracks WhatsApp outages, 40 per cent users were unable to download the app, 30 per cent had trouble in sending messages and 22 per cent had problems with the web version.

“To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now”, tweeted Facebook.