Facebook's massive outage costs the company an estimated $60 million in revenue
The social network is losing ad dollars every second its platforms remain offline.
- 2022 Eddie award for consumer analysis
Facebook makes most of its revenue from ad sales.
Facebook's massive outage is reportedly putting a big dent in the social network's pocket.
Fortune and Snopes estimate that the world's largest social network has already lost at least $60 million in revenue since its apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, went offline at about 8:30 a.m. PT/11:30 a.m. ET on Monday.
Both outlets estimated the revenue loss for Facebook as of 1 p.m. PT/4 p.m. ET by using numbers the company provided when it released its second-quarter earnings. During that three-month period, Facebook reported about $29 billion in revenue. That means that Facebook makes roughly $319.6 million per day in revenue, $13.3 million per hour, $220,000 per minute, and $3,700 per second. The outlets then used those numbers to calculate revenue loss based on how long the outage has lasted.
The estimates underscore the financial impact of a massive outage on Facebook's ad business. The company said it's working on restoring its services, but hasn't said what's causing the outage. Facebook is currently back up for some people.
"We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience," Facebook tweeted about six hours ago.
As of roughly 3:30 p.m. PT/6:30 p.m. ET, Facebook services were slowly coming back online, the social network said. "To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry," the company tweeted. "We've been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us."
To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.
— Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021
Lost revenue wasn't the only financial problem Facebook encountered on Monday. Shares in the company dropped nearly 5% to $326.23 per share amid a broad selloff in social media stocks. (Shares of Twitter and Snap were both off more than 5%.)
The slide in Facebook shares weighed on CEO Mark Zuckerberg's net worth, which dropped to $121.6 billion. He's now ranks below Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and is the fifth wealthiest person in the world, according to Bloomberg.