The outage experienced by Meta on Tuesday, March 5, which affected Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, reportedly incurred losses amounting to approximately $100 million for the company.
According to Dan Ives, managing director at New York’s Wedbush Securities, Mark Zuckerberg’s revenue suffered a significant hit due to the global disruption of the platforms.
Meta’s share price also experienced a decline of 1.5 percent during the onset of issue reports around 10 am ET, further dropping by 1.6 percent subsequently.
As the primary source of revenue for Meta comes from advertisements shown to users, the technical issues that led to the platforms’ outage also impacted its earnings.
Despite the financial impact, Meta is unlikely to disclose the exact extent of the financial setback resulting from the outage, as stated by Ives.
Although the amount may seem trivial compared to Meta’s overall worth of roughly $134 billion in 2023, the outage raises questions about the company’s operational resilience and the nature of the technical issues that caused it.
Meta attributed the outage to ‘technical issues,’ leaving the specifics of the incident undisclosed.
Internal sources at Facebook mentioned that the company’s internal systems were also affected, possibly contributing to the widespread issues experienced by users.
Users reported being unable to access their accounts across Facebook and Messenger, while Instagram’s News Feed displayed error messages.
Although the issues were resolved by midday ET, concerns remain regarding the cost and implications of such disruptions for the social media giant.
While some initially speculated about possible hacking incidents, the outage appears to have been primarily due to internal network problems.
The disruption serves as a reminder of the challenges faced by large platforms like Meta in managing extensive traffic and data flows.
Despite the annoyance caused by such outages, experts suggest that they are typically resolved within a few hours and are not indicative of more serious cybersecurity threats.