Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has dropped $71 billion this year
The 2022 stock market crash has reduced the personal worth of many tech billionaires, but not as much as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg, the founder of the company formerly known as Facebook, has seen his net worth plummet by nearly $71 billion this year, according to Bloomberg calculations.Zuckerberg, 38, has slipped from No. 3 on Forbes Billionaire List 22nd from last year to today.
Blame the drop on a dizzying drop in Meta stock, which holds most of Zuckerberg’s fortune.Although this year’s rout in financial markets has wiped out the wealth of several tech billionaires by about quarterno one, not even Crypto CEO Changpeng Zhao, has seen a scale like Zuckerberg.
Since Facebook became Meta nearly a year ago, its shares have fallen about 60%, and Zuckerberg’s worth has fallen with it.
The company’s move to Metaverse highlights problems with its traditional business model, which relied on selling massive amounts of ads targeting very specific user data.apple Last year’s changes in iOS 14 This made it more difficult for advertisers to track, which greatly reduced Meta’s profitability.
Among social media companies, Meta and Snap rely the most on iOS users, said Angelo Zino, an analyst covering social media companies at CFRA. He noted that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is doing better in revenue “because they haven’t been impacted by the iOS changes,” he said.
“The privacy issue is much bigger than most people expect, and it’s likely to be longer than anyone thinks,” he added.
Meta reports first drop in its user numbers as revenue slows FebruaryAt the same time, the company is increasing spending by roughly $10 billion a year to build the virtual reality Metaverse, a project that Zuckerberg has said could take years. That’s a cause for concern for investors who have seen a surge in spending in the short-term without a return.
“If you become an investor over time, there’s reason to be excited, but what we know from investors is that they tend to be impatient,” Zino told CBS MoneyWatch.
Zuckerberg remains optimistic
“You know the next vision of the wider internet might come to fruition, you just don’t know how long it will take and the exact role of Meta… All you know now is, basically, it’s going to cost a lot of money ,”He says.
Still, his plummeting fortune doesn’t appear to hurt Zuckerberg’s tech optimism. Speaking with podcast host Joe Rogan last month, the Meta lead doubled down on his belief that the metaverse would be more “useful” and allow people to have “healthier” relationships with technology.
“I don’t necessarily want people to spend more time on the computer,” Zuckerberg said, according to wealth. “I just wish people’s screen time was better.”
