Mark Zuckerberg loses $3-billion in a single day

If you’re having a bad week, do spare a thought for poor Mark Zuckerberg.

The founder and CEO of social media giant Facebook lost US$3-billion in personal net wealth on Thursday, after Facebook’s growth forecast was given a dim outlook.

Facebook claims that it will hit the limit of how many ads can be shown in its app’s primary news feed in 2017 — a big, big problem for the advertising-reliant firm. As a result, the company’s share price also tanked 8% in late Wednesday trading. That, of course, lost Zuckerberg a good 6% of his personal wealth.

It’s an extremely odd predicament for both Zuckerberg and his company, especially since Facebook is actually doing really well.

Mark Zuckerberg lost around $3-billion of his net wealth after Facebook shares dropped 8% Wednesday

Facebook’s advertising in the third quarter of 2016 grew a ridiculous 56% to US$7.01-billion, which was slightly above estimates. More impressively, more than four-fifths of that revenue came from mobile phones. This platform also seems to be Facebook’s key driver going forward, with the likes of Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram all keeping the company buoyant.

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. What goes up, must come down, and this is what analysts, and the company itself, is predicting for the next year.

Nevertheless with over 1.79-billion monthly active users, and over US$52-billion in his back pocket, we can’t imagine that Mark Zuckerberg will be requiring a handout anytime soon.