Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram Bounce Back As Zuckerberg Loses $7bn To Outage
3 min read
Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram have resumed working after the social media platforms faced a massive global outage that saw many users left stranded.
The outage is also estimated to have cost the social media entrepreneur, Mark Zuckerberg a whooping $7billion dollars.
How the outage began
Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms were hit by a massive outage on Monday, impacting potentially tens of millions of people as users flocked to other networks to sound off.
Tracker Downdetector was showing outages in heavily populated areas in North America and parts of Europe, with problems being reported from around 1545 GMT.
Users trying to access Facebook in affected areas were greeted with the message: “Something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.”
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said on Twitter, echoing similar statements from Instagram and WhatsApp.
A major outage hitting all three platforms, which have billions of users, is rare though apps are regularly forced offline by technical problems. Other networks have seen a surge in users as the outage persisted for several hours.
“Signups are way up on Signal (welcome everyone!),” the messaging app, wrote on Twitter, which was still functioning.
“We also know what it’s like to work through an outage, and wish the best for the engineers working on bringing back service on other platforms,” it added.
Facebook has not communicated on the possible cause of the outage, but cyber security experts noted they had found signs that online routes that lead people to the social giant were disrupted.
“Facebook and related properties disappeared from the Internet in a flurry of BGP updates,” tweeted John Graham-Cumming, the chief technology officer at web company Cloudflare.
He added that minutes before the services went offline “we saw a large number of … changes (mostly route withdrawals)”.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder. He also owns WhatsApp and Instagram.
Zuckerberg loses whooping $7bn dollars to outage.
The net worth of billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook, fell by nearly $7 billion in a few hours after the company’s flagship products collapsed, knocking him down a notch on the list of the world’s richest people.
The flagship products include Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
According to Bloomberg, a selloff plummeted Facebook’s stock around 5 percent on Monday.
The stock slide dropped Zuckerberg’s worth to $128 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, dropping him below Bill Gates to No. 5. He’s down from almost $140 billion in a matter of weeks, according to the
Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram all went down in what appeared to be another global outage.
The three social media platforms owned by Mark Zuckerberg completely stopped working around 5pm Nigerian time on Monday, leaving millions of users worried.
In a tweet on Twitter, Facebook said it was aware of the issue and working to fix it.
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” the company tweeted.
Meanwhile, checks by MetroWatch late Monday night showed that Facebook and Instagram have been restored hours after being hit by global outage.
By Joseph Shiazzabwa
