At the end of the trading session on October 3 in the US market (early morning of October 4, Vietnam time), shares of Meta Platforms - Facebook's parent company - increased by more than 1.7% to nearly 582 USD/share. This is the historical high price of this stock, thereby helping Mr. Mark Zuckerberg's net worth increase more than 6 times in less than 2 years.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg now owns 13% of Meta, surpassing Amazon CEO and chairman Jeff Bezos, rising to the second richest position in the world, just behind billionaire Elon Musk of electric car company Tesla according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Mark Zuckerberg's fortune crossed the $200 billion mark for the first time in late September. The Facebook founder is now worth more than $206 billion, up $78 billion from early 2024.

Jeff Bezos is now worth more than $205 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg is only about 50 billion USD behind Elon Musk.

This can be considered a miracle for Mark Zuckerberg in the context of Meta Platforms falling into two unprecedented crises, comparable to the Nasdaq stock exchange debut - Facebook's initial public offering (IPO) in mid-2012.

As of October 3, Meta Platforms had a market capitalization of 1.47 trillion USD.

Two Facebook Shocks

The first shock that pushed the giant Facebook into a critical moment was the scandal of 50 million Facebook accounts being illegally exploited by Cambridge Analytica (CA), allegedly to serve political campaigns; including the election of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and the referendum that led the UK to decide to leave the European Union (Brexit).

The incident has outraged the world and attracted public attention because of the way users' personal data is collected and exploited.

The impact of the incident on Facebook was huge. Facebook shares plunged 19%, equivalent to $119 billion in market capitalization being wiped out (July 26, 2018). This was also the biggest evaporation in the history of the US stock market up to that point. CEO Mark Zuckerberg alone lost $12 billion in just one day, bringing his fortune down to $74 billion, down to number 5 in the world.

Facebook's stock price continued to fall, down to about $125/share by December 2018, compared to $210/share in mid-July of the same year.

The drop was the result of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, compounded by bad news like falling revenue and eight insiders, with Zuckerberg selling a total of $3.9 billion worth of shares.

The second shock was Facebook (renamed Meta) losing $10 billion in revenue in 2021 because of Apple’s privacy changes. Facebook’s online advertising business suffered a major blow when Apple introduced an iOS privacy update that weakened its ability to track users across the web.

What will help Facebook revive?

The reason why Meta Platforms' stock - Facebook's parent company - has increased sharply recently is because Wall Street investors have continuously poured money into this stock code, when Meta has continuously reported quarterly business results that continuously exceeded analysts' forecasts.

Meta said in July that second-quarter revenue rose 22% to nearly $39.1 billion, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth exceeding 20%.

After the “Apple shock” and falling revenue, Zuckerberg launched a massive cost-cutting plan in late 2022 that will last into 2023. In total, 21,000 employees, or about 25% of Facebook’s workforce, were laid off.

Meta is also quite lucky when online advertising activities recover strongly thanks to the appearance and "bombardment" of two Chinese e-commerce giants Temu and Shien.

Temu owner Colin Huang quickly surpassed Alibaba billionaire Jack Ma in 2024, thereby becoming the richest person in China with a fortune of nearly 49 billion USD as of August 12.

Temu has been making waves in the US and recently Europe by selling cheap products with big promotions. Of course, the main expense of the giant Temu is online advertising, bringing a large amount of money to Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg's big bet on the metaverse was once considered a mistake, but is now seen as promising and could pay off for the Meta boss.

Last week, Meta launched the Orion AR augmented reality glasses and received many positive reviews. AR Orion has created a fever in the community not only with its fashionable and beautiful design but also with the integration of many modern artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, a compact computer system, integrated connectivity, camera and display screen. Meta's AR Orion could be the future of computing.

AR Orion represents Meta's evolution from a social networking company to a metaverse company - arguably the next generation of the Internet, a tight and authentic fusion of the physical and digital worlds.

Facebook crashes globally, shares plummet, Mark Zuckerberg suffers billions of dollars in pain Facebook crashes globally, a rare incident for a world technology giant. Owner Mark Zuckerberg immediately lost several billion dollars, but also suffered the pain of being teased by other technology rivals, such as billionaire Elon Musk.