Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook has reported strong results in earnings, making the CEO one of the richest men in the world.
Facebook's shares closed up 5.2 percent at $A79.59 on Thursday, which brought the social network's value up to $205.57 billion, according to NEWS.com. The company has only been around for 10 years, and now it's worth more than older companies like Coca-Cola, which has operating since 1886.
Zuckerberg now has a personal wealth of over $31 billion, putting him right behind Carlos Slim, who is currently the richest man in the world with $85.34 billion, and Bill Gates, who is in second place with $84.81 billion.
The 30-year-old entrepreneur joins Slim and Gates as the only people to have more billions in money than years lived, Business Insider reported. Slim was valued at $74 billion at the age of 71 in 2011, and matched it $73 billion at 73 in 2013. Gates, 58, is currently worth over $80 million.
Zuckerberg has gone through several purchases that some considered to be crazy along the way of getting a spot in the special club of billionaires. Such deals include buying Instagram for $1 billion right before Facebook's IPO, as well as buying messaging app WhatsApp for $16 billion. His most recent purchase was that of VR headset company Oculus Rift for $2 billion.
Facebook said on Wednesday that it saw an increase in its profits to $839.60 million in the three months before June 30th, which was 138 percent higher than the previous year, NEWS.com reported. The company added that the number of visitors it gets at least once a month rose to 1.32 billion, which is 14 percent higher than the number of visitors per month it had in the same quarter last year.
"It was a very impressive quarter on top of what we believe were very high (Wall) Street expectations," said Paul Vogel, analyst at Barclays.
