Zuckerberg Made Billions Through His Congress Testimony

• During Zuckerberg's testimony in front of the US Congress, his net worth increased by $3 billion and Facebook's market share jumped by $20 billion.
• Facebook received a lot of bad PR in light of the CA incident, and it is likely that Zuckerberg's calm and confident persona while handling all the controversial issues during the hearing has helped his fortune.
• Still, Facebook's shares are down by 6.5% when compared to last year's figures at the same time.

In the light of the Cambridge Analytica incident, Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify in front of the US Congress, as it was due to Facebook’s negligence to protect user data that 87 million Facebook users’ information was compromised.

It was a two-day hearing, and on the first day itself, Zuckerberg was held in front 44 US senators and went through a 5 hour-long Q&A session. In the end, we did manage to gain some revelations into the mind of the man behind the social media giant; however, Zuckerberg clearly won considering the big picture as his net worth got boosted by over $3 billion.

Since last year, Facebook's shares have faced a steep decline due to multiple privacy concerns. Then, after it was learned that Cambridge Analytica - a political consultancy which had a massive rule during the Donald Trump’s Electoral Campaign - actually siphoned data of 87 million users from Facebook, it seemed that the there was no redemption for the social media company. During the hearing, Zuckerberg tackled multiple questions, all ranging from different controversial topics that had created a bad PR for the company. Besides the CA incident, there were also questions regarding data protection measures against Russian agents, content moderation on the platform, and so.

Image Courtesy of Greater Patchogue Daily

The Facebook CEO answered all these questions comfortably and confidently which should have made a positive PR impact as evident from the 4.5% jump in Facebook shares. During the 5 hours long hearing, Facebook gained around $20 billion in the market capital - which is their biggest daily gain in nearly two years. Zuckerberg himself had $3 billion added to his fortune.

However, it should still be noted that Facebook’s shares are still down by 6.5% when compared to last year’s figures. When the CA news first came into light, Facebook’s market share went down by $58 billion in a week.