AGS NEWS – The global outage of Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger on Tuesday, March 5, reportedly caused a significant financial setback for Meta, the parent company.

According to Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities, Mark Zuckerberg incurred an estimated loss of around $100 million in revenue due to the platforms being down worldwide.

Meta’s share price also experienced a decline of 1.5 percent when reports of the issue began circulating around 10 am ET, further dropping by 1.6 percent afterward.

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The company primarily generates revenue through advertisements displayed to users, which were impacted by the technical issues that led to the outage.

Although Meta is unlikely to disclose the exact financial impact of the outage, Ives stated that the loss was likely below $100 million, which might be considered negligible for a company valued at approximately $134 billion in 2023.

Meta attributed the outage to “technical issues,” but the exact cause remains unclear. An insider at Facebook revealed that the company’s internal systems were also affected, possibly contributing to the problem.

Users experienced various glitches, including being unable to log into their accounts or encountering errors in the News Feed. While the issues were resolved by shortly after 12 pm ET, concerns lingered about the cost to the social media giant.

Most issue reports cited problems with the apps, with percentages as follows: 72 percent for Facebook, 64 percent for Instagram, and 50 percent for Messenger.

Some users initially feared their accounts had been hacked, leading to widespread speculation and numerous posts on social media platforms about the outage.

Elon Musk even commented on the situation, suggesting on his platform X that if users could read his post, it meant their servers were operational.

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The outage affected two-factor authentication (2FA), a security measure for login, and Meta’s service dashboard displayed major disruptions for some features before switching to “Unknown” status.

While a cyberattack was considered unlikely by experts, including tech advisor Jake Moore, Meta’s history of similar incidents raises questions about the reliability of its infrastructure.

Despite the inconvenience caused by the outage, experts like Kerri Lisenbigler from TheRevOpsTeam downplayed its severity, attributing it to the challenges of managing large-scale platforms like Facebook and Instagram.