His net worth has dropped by 4.4%.
Facebook is planning to make changes to the algorithms that determine the order content on our news feeds to make sure users see more posts from people they actually know.
With the new changes, users’ timelines will be less saturated by posts from news pages and celebrities whom they follow. As a result, Mark Zuckerberg has lost $3.3bn of his personal fortune, as his net worth dropped by 4.4%. He is now worth a measly $72.4bn (€59.3bn).
Zuckerberg, 33, started Facebook in 2004 and still owns 17% of the company, whose share prices dropped when the news of the planned changes went public on Thursday.
Zuckerberg explained the need to make the changes in a Facebook post:
“We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us,” he said. “But recently we’ve gotten feedback that public content – posts from businesses, brands and media – is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”
It has been suggested that the changes were influenced by the fear of what is known as “context collapse” – the phenomenon of people sharing less and less about their personal lives. Facebook suffer from this as they have less useful data for advertisers whom Facebook need to make money.
While Mark Zuckerberg has taken a personal financial hit, it is thought that the changes will increase Facebook’s commercial value in the long run.
Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC, told Bloomberg: “Making the feed more relevant should boost user and engagement growth over time.”
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