Meta, the social media giant, is looking to enhance its business strategy by reducing its workforce and improving efficiency as it shifts its focus towards investing in the metaverse and artificial intelligence (AI).
On March 14, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Meta, announced job cuts as part of the company’s efforts to boost its technology and financial performance in a challenging economic environment in the U.S.
Zuckerberg stated that the layoffs would involve eliminating unnecessary processes and roles, streamlining operations, and discontinuing lower-priority projects. The company’s leaders will reveal restructuring plans to flatten the organization and reduce recruitment rates.
The layoffs will commence on March 15 and will continue over the next three months. Meta plans to reduce its workforce by around 10,000 employees and close approximately 5,000 unfilled positions.
The recruitment team at Meta is expected to be impacted, and further restructuring and layoffs within the technology team will be announced by late April. The final round of layoffs for the business team is scheduled for late May.
Zuckerberg cautioned that layoffs may continue throughout the year, even if it means parting ways with talented employees who have contributed to the company’s success.
Meta intends to eliminate multiple management levels and transition a significant number of managers into individual contributors in order to enhance agility and efficiency.
In a separate development on March 13, Stéphane Kasriel, Meta’s head of commerce and financial technologies, disclosed the company’s decision to discontinue support for non-fungible token (NFT) projects in order to focus on initiatives that benefit content creators.
While Meta will still support content creators showcasing their NFT collections on its social media platforms, it will discontinue unprofitable projects following Reality Labs’ substantial $13.7 billion loss, which impacted key metaverse projects.
The integration of NFTs and web3 technology into Meta’s metaverse plans has been a topic of uncertainty. While a demo video for its metaverse featured NFTs being sold after a digital concert and Zuckerberg highlighted the advantages of interoperability, the extent of web3 technology in Meta’s strategy has yet to be fully outlined.
Despite web3 metaverse builders viewing NFTs as crucial to their vision of an open metaverse, tech giants like Meta and Microsoft have shown interest in interoperable standards rather than fully embracing blockchain networks and assets.
Meta’s dedication to building a metaverse remains strong, as evident in its recent announcement and previous statements. The company consistently portrays the metaverse as a long-term endeavor, with a renewed emphasis on AI development taking precedence in the current technological landscape.
While NFTs are not currently a primary focus for Meta, the company remains committed to its vision of a metaverse that will continue to evolve and shape the future of online interactions.