Meta’s workforce ballooned in recent years as the Facebook parent company signaled its ambitions for the metaverse. Still, recent moves suggest that it is feeling the sting of changing tech trends and rough market conditions. The company today announced another round of layoffs, one day after saying that it was “winding down” support for NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post on 14 March 2023 that Meta will terminate about 10,000 additional employees in 2023 and close about 5,000 current listings for open positions. The move will affect its recruiting department immediately, its tech groups in April 2023, and business groups in May 2023.
Meta previously laid off about 11,000 employees in November 2023, representing about 13% of its workforce at the time. As of 31 December 2022, Meta reported having a headcount of 86,482 employees across all divisions, a 20% increase from the year prior but said that the tally still included most of the people included in the November 2022 layoffs.
Zuckerberg framed the latest cuts as part of Meta’s broader “Year of efficiency” campaign, in which the social media giant attempts to continue ahead with a leaner team while flattening its organizational structure, “canceling lower-priority projects,” and optimizing tools and processes across the company.
What does this mean for the metaverse? Meta made a lot of media attention in 2021 for the idea of the future 3D internet, changing its company name to reflect what Zuckerberg described as a new frontier for the dominant tech company. The news also helped spur interest in Web3 metaverse games, with virtual land NFT plots surging in value.
But metaverse noise quieted in 2022 amid an array of backlash to the idea of an immersive internet, Meta’s early version, and the rising costs of digital real estate. Meta reaffirmed its focus on building the metaverse late last year. Still, it has increasingly pivoted its messaging towards the renewed fervor around artificial intelligence (AI) thanks to the success of rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT. “Our single largest investment is in advancing AI and building it into every one of our products,” he wrote. “Our leading work building the metaverse and shaping the next generation of computing platforms also remains central to defining the future of social connection,” posted Zuckerberg.
In Meta’s Q4 2022 earnings call on 1 February, Zuckerberg said that the “major technological waves driving our roadmap are AI today and over the longer term the metaverse,” adding that the firm’s “priorities haven’t changed since last year.”
He emphasized then that Meta continues investing in virtual reality and mixed reality headsets via its Reality Labs division to build towards a future, immersive internet. However, Zuckerberg added, "most people are going to experience the metaverse for the first time on phones and start building up their digital identities across our apps.”
On 15 March 2023, Meta announced that it was “winding down” support for NFTs on its platforms less than one year after entering the space. Instagram first launched an NFT trial in May 2022, letting select users of the photo-sharing app display their owned artwork and collectibles. Facebook later added the same feature. NFTs (non-fungible tokens) play a significant role in the metaverse by providing a way to represent unique digital assets, such as virtual real estate, in-game items, and collectibles, on a blockchain.
In November 2022, Instagram said it would let creators mint their NFTs via Polygon, an Ethereum scaling network. Then it launched exclusive NFT mints from notable creators like photographer Isaac “Drift” Wright and AI artist Refik Anadol.
In a Twitter thread, Meta’s Commerce and Fintech Lead Stephane Kasriel said that the firm would shift away from NFT collectibles “to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses on our apps, both today and in the metaverse.”
How much of a role NFTs and Web3 would play in Meta’s version of the metaverse was always unclear. Meta’s metaverse demonstration video in 2021 showed NFTs being sold after a digital concert, and Zuckerberg made a point to emphasize what he saw as the benefits of interoperability. Still, the firm has yet to detail the extent of Web3 tech in its plans. Web3 metaverse builders see NFTs as key to their vision of an open metaverse in which users can bring their owned avatars, apparel, and items across online platforms. But when tech giants like Meta and Microsoft have announced metaverse plans, they have signaled interest in interoperable standards but no clear embrace of blockchain networks and assets.
Based on Meta’s recent announcement and other comments, Meta still says that it is building towards the metaverse. Meta has consistently framed it as a long-term process. Still, that message is especially being amplified as AI developments take greater precedence across the tech world, and NFTs will not be a key factor in that push, at least for now.
Red Sky Alliance is a Cyber Threat Analysis and Intelligence Service organization. For questions, comments or assistance, please get in touch with the office directly at 1-844-492-7225, or feedback@wapacklabs.com
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