Mark Zuckerberg gains $1.7 billion after launch of Instagram Television

Just recently Facebook-owned Instagram introduced its Instagram Television (IGTV), which ultimately led to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gaining $1.7 billion immediately after.

According to Forbes, CEO Zuckerberg became $1.7 billion richer on Wednesday after Facebook’s stock rose 2.3% in regular trading on Instagram’s announcement about rolling out its IGTV. This raise made Zuckerberg the biggest winner over the past day of any billionaire.

Since Facebook’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) back in 2012, the company’s stock has gone through an incredible growth of more than 428% making Zuckerberg the fifth richest person in the US today with a net worth of $77 billion.

With a billion users, Instagram takes on YouTube in video

When Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012, it had only 30 million active users, which rose to 1 billion at present as announced at a press conference held on June 20.

At the age of 34, Zuckerberg has marked himself the youngest of the world’s ten richest people. He was also named on Forbes’ ranking of the 400 richest Americans in 2008 with a net worth of $1.5 billion, when Facebook was still a private company. Later, in 2015, Zuckerberg chose to donate 99% of his company’s stock over the course of his lifetime to a charitable LLC called the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative.

Instagram is now capable enough to join the group of other social media apps in number of users in comparison with Facebook which owns 2.19 billion monthly active users, WhatsApp at 1.5 billion and Snapchat at around 100 million monthly active users.

The photo and video sharing platform, Instagram launched its IGTV with which the platform is all set to compete with the video streaming site, YouTube. With IGTV, users can upload videos up to one hour in length, stepping up from the previous time limit of one minute. IGTV will also highlight popular Instagram videos from celebrities and renowned personalities. The videos will be available on an IGTV tab within the app.