Meta also continues to feel pressure from Apple, which has implemented a series of privacy changes to its iOS software in recent years, hampering the ad-targeting capabilities of Facebook and Instagram and causing the company to lose money.
Perhaps Zuckerberg’s biggest problem with shareholders is of his own making. He is pursuing his vision of the metaverse, a next-generation version of the internet that he believes will connect different worlds, from virtual and augmented reality to different types of game worlds and other experiences. That work is carried out in the company’s Reality Labs division, which is run by former Zuckerberg confidant and Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, better known as Boz.
That wasn’t a problem when Zuckerberg was posting steady and reliable growth quarter after quarter. But given the high spending and difficult economic climate, analysts have raised concerns about the feasibility of Zuckerberg’s grandiose plans, concerns he has largely ignored.
“I think this is going to be a very important thing, and I think it would be a mistake on our part not to focus on any of these areas, which I think are going to be fundamentally important going forward,” he said in a statement. she called with investors last year.
To offset continued spending in the metaverse, the company has spent the last six months trying to cut costs. It has greatly reduced benefits and non-essential travel for employees. It cut 13 percent of its workforce in November, cutting the jobs of about 11,000 of its employees, especially in the recruiting and business divisions.
Zuckerberg blamed the global economic slowdown for the layoffs. But he also blamed himself, in part, as he and other tech executives pointed to overhiring of him in the early days of the pandemic. As the world was ordered to stay put, the pandemic brought with it a surge of people relying on online products and services more than ever, which in turn saw tech companies add new positions at a rapid pace. .
Zuckerberg and others admitted they had been too quick to see a largely digital life as the new reality for many, even as that reality changed again with the advent of vaccines and more people venturing back into the physical world more freely.
