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Facebook parent Meta is slashing 10,000 jobs, about as many as the social media company announced late last year in its first round of cuts, as uncertainly about the global economy hits the technology sector particularly hard.
The company announced 11,000 job cuts in November, about 13% of its workforce at the time. In addition to the layoffs, Meta said Tuesday that it would not fill 5,000 open positions.
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Meta and other tech companies have been hiring aggressively for at least two years and in recent months have begun to let some of those workers go. Hiring in the U.S. is still strong, but layoffs have hit hard in some sectors.
Early last month, Meta posted falling profits and its third consecutive quarter of declining revenue. On the same day, the company said that it would buy back as much as $40 billion of its own stock.
The Menlo Park, company said Tuesday it will reduce the size of its recruiting team and make further cuts in its tech groups in late April, and then its business groups in late May.
Zuckerberg has invested tens of billions of dollars building out its metaverse, its virutal reality concept, and renamed the company Meta, signaling a new focus for Facebook.
“As I’ve talked about efficiency this year, I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs — and that will be in service of both building a leaner, more technical company and improving our business performance to enable our long term vision,” said Zuckerberg.
The biggest tech companies in the U.S. are cutting costs elsewhere, too.
This month, Amazon paused construction on its second headquarters in Virginia following the biggest round of layoffs in the company’s history and its shifting plans around remote work.
Global inflation has remained stubborn and its made for more difficult decisions for both households and businesses in the U.S.
Fast growth companies, including many in the technology sector, are hunkering down for what may be an extended period of adverse economic conditions.
“At this point, I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years,” Zuckerberg said in a message to employees.
Meta shares rose nearly 7% Tuesday.
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Source: NurPhoto / Getty / Meta
If you are a content creator caking off the Reels Play bonus program on Instagram and Facebook, you’re going to have to find another way to bring in coins. Meta is officially getting rid of the program.
If you’re wondering why you haven’t gotten that notification to start pumping out those Instagram Reels, there is a good reason for that. Meta is ending the program, as seen on The Verge, first reported by Business Insider.
According to Business Insider, Meta will not offer any “new or renewed” Reels Play bonus deals, but the company will honor existing commitments.
In a statement to The Verge via an email, Paige Cohen, a Meta spokesperson, said, “We are evolving the test of our Reels Play bonus on Instagram and Facebook as we focus on investing in a suite of monetization solutions to help creators earn steady streams of income. We will look into ways to run the program in a more targeted form, for example, in potential new markets.”
The rollout of the Reels Play bonus program has been far from perfect since its launch in 2021 as a direct response to the TikTok payout program.
Initially, content creators were cashing out, receiving payouts sometimes in the tens of thousands. Over time those payments have gotten smaller, and content creators are having a tough time achieving those large payouts again.
Meta initially had a $2 billion player pool that the company promised to content creators through 2022, so we guess the well has run dry.
You can still make money through subscriptions and badges, but those methods are not as reliable as making reels.
Instagram Is Not The Only Social Media Platform Pinching Pennies
According to The Verge, Snapchat, offering content creators $1 million a day in viral content on its TokTok-like feature Spotlight, gradually cut that amount over 2022, introducing other monetization methods like ad revenue.
YouTube was offering creators cash payouts to pump out YouTube Shorts, but that ended with the video-sharing platform moving to a revenue-sharing model last fall.
Welp.
We shall see if this decision impacts Instagram users’ decision to make reels going forward.
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Photos: NurPhoto / Getty
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Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty / Meta Verified
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Mark Zuckerberg has been catching nothing but Ls since he announced he was changing the name of Facebook to Meta and was going all in on the VR market. Now he’s taking a page out of Elon Musk’s book with his latest move.
Rumors began circulating on Elon Musk’s Twitter and Beyoncé’s internet that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta would unveil its own Twitter Blue clone to give Facebook and Instagram users verification badges for a price.
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That rumor was accurate, and the new subscription service is called Meta Verified Engadget reports. Mark Zuckerberg announced his new broadcast channel (Instagram’s latest feature) that Meta Verified is coming whether we care for it or not.
According to Zuckerberg, those who cough up the money will get a verification badge, increased profile visibility, additional impersonation protection, and direct access to customer support.
“This feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services,” Zuck said in his post. He also revealed that Meta Verified would be tested in Australia and New Zealand before the company rolls it out to other countries.
The service will also cost iOS and Android users $15 and $12 on the web minus the app store commission fees.
Unlike Twitter Blue’s sloppy rollout, Meta hopes to curb people from making fake accounts for notable companies. Potential Meta Verified users must be 18 or older and present a valid government-issued ID matching their name and profile photo on their Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Once you get verified, you can’t change your profile name, username, date of birth, or photo and must repeat the verification process.
Already verified accounts before the announcement will keep their status due to their notability.
Some Other Ridiculous Meta Verified Perks
Engadget also reports subscribers will receive 100 free stars, a digital currency we have never heard of, to tip content creators on Facebook.
Meta Verified subscribers could access exclusive stickers and reels for their Instagram Stories and Reels.
Will you sign up? Or is this a hard pass?
It sounds like another bad idea from the mind of Mark Zuckerberg.
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Photo: Anadolu Agency / Getty
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Source: NurPhoto / Getty
Former President Donald Trump will be allowed back on Facebook and Instagram, after a ruling by their parent company Meta to reinstate his accounts after two years.
The decision was announced Wednesday (Jan. 25) in a statement posted to Meta’s website. Trump was banned from the social media platforms Jan. 7, 2021—the day after a mob of his supporters had stormed the U.S. Capitol causing a riot. That decision was made due to high concerns that his posts could run the risk of inciting more violence. Twitter and YouTube also suspended his accounts that week.
“The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad, and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs in the statement.
“But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform.” The statement goes on to say that Trump faces sterner penalties for any future violations, which would result in another suspension of up to two years depending on how severe the infraction is.
The move comes as Twitter reinstated Trump’s account late last year after tech billionaire Elon Musk acquired the platform. American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said that the decision was “the right call” given Trump’s position as a political figure.
“While the government cannot force platforms to carry certain speech, that doesn’t mean the largest platforms should engage in political censorship,” he remarked. In a post to the right-wing social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote that the “de-platforming” he experienced should “never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving retribution!”
But there are many more who criticized Meta’s decision, claiming that it illustrates a double standard when it comes to high-profile people. Democratic lawmakers and disinformation experts cite that Trump still presents a danger with his rhetoric, especially as he campaigns for the White House in 2024.
“The Capitol community is still picking up the pieces from the Jan. 6 insurrection that Trump ignited, and now he is returning to the virtual scene of the crime,” said Illinois congresswoman Jan Schakowsky in a statement.
Facebook parent Meta is laying off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce, as it contends with faltering revenue and broader tech industry woes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees Wednesday.
The job cuts come just a week after widespread layoffs at Twitter under its new owner, billionaire Elon Musk. There have been numerous job cuts at other tech companies that hired rapidly during the pandemic.
Zuckerberg as well said that he had made the decision to hire aggressively, anticipating rapid growth even after the pandemic ended.
“Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected,” Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement. “Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”
Meta, like other social media companies, enjoyed a financial boost during the pandemic lockdown era because more people stayed home and scrolled on their phones and computers. But as the lockdowns ended and people started going outside again, revenue growth began to falter.
Of particular concern to investors, Meta poured over $10 billion a year into the “metaverse” as it shifts its focus away from social media. Zuckerberg predicts the metaverse, an immersive digital universe, will eventually replace smartphones as the primary way people use technology.
Spooked investors have sent company shares tumbling more than 71% since the beginning of the year and the stock now trades at levels last seen in 2015.
An economic slowdown and a grim outlook for online advertising — by far Meta’s biggest revenue source — have contributed to Meta’s woes as well. This summer, Meta posted its first quarterly revenue decline in history, followed by another, bigger decline in the fall.
Some of the pain is company-specific, while some is tied to broader economic and technological forces.
Last week, Twitter laid off about half of its 7,500 employees, part of a chaotic overhaul as Musk took the helm. He tweeted that there was no choice but to cut the jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day,” though did not provide details about the losses.
Meta and its advertisers are bracing for a potential recession. There’s also the challenge of Apple’s privacy tools, which make it more difficult for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snap to track people without their consent and target ads to them.
Competition from TikTok is also an a growing threat as younger people flock to the video sharing app over Instagram, which Meta also owns.
“We’ve cut costs across our business, including scaling back budgets, reducing perks, and shrinking our real estate footprint,” Zuckerberg said. ”We’re restructuring teams to increase our efficiency. But these measures alone won’t bring our expenses in line with our revenue growth, so I’ve also made the hard decision to let people go.”
A hiring freeze at the company will be extended through the first quarter of 2023, Zuckerberg said. The company has also slashed its real estate footprint and he said that with so many employees working outside of the office, the company will transition to desk sharing for those that remain.
More cost cuts at Meta will be rolled out in coming months, Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg told employees Wednesday that they will receive an email letting them know if they are among those being let go. Access to most company systems will be cut off for people losing their jobs, he said, due to the sensitive nature of that information.
“We’re keeping email addresses active throughout the day so everyone can say farewell,” Zuckerberg said.
Former employees will receive 16 weeks of base pay, plus two additional weeks for every year with the company, Zuckerberg said. Health insurance for those employees and their families will continue for six months.
Shares of Meta Platforms Inc. jumped almost 5% before the opening bell Wednesday.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, reported $27.7 billion in second-quarter revenue, down 4 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago, continuing a trend of ad-supported tech companies feeling the pain of a tougher macroeconomic environment and renewed competition from competitors like TikTok.
However, the company beat Wall Street expectations for revenue. The company had previously forecast revenue of $26 billion–28.5 billion for the quarter, so it met its own guidance.
Going forward, however, things look tough. The company forecast Q4 revenue of $30-32.5 billion, below Wall Street expectations, sending its share price lower after hours.
Meta net income fell by 52 percent to $4.4 billion, while its daily active user base rose by 4 percent to 2.93 billion.
The company is in the midst of a strategic pivot toward the “metaverse,” which it seems to define as being driven by virtual reality and augmented reality. However, its early efforts in the space remain niche, even as it has committed billions of dollars toward investing in the space.
In its Q3 earnings report, the company said it was making “significant changes across the board to operate more efficiently,” including shrinking some teams and keeping others flat, so that it is “investing headcount growth only in our highest priorities.”
Those priorities will include developing its AI discovery engine, its ads and business messaging platforms, and its future investment in the metaverse.
In the near-term, the company expects savings as it “rationalizes” its office footprint.
The AI discovery engine is particularly relevant to Meta’s TikTok competitor Reels, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg says is stealing time spent from the other app. Reels is now a $3 billion annual run rate business, he added.
When the discovery engine is built out, the company will be able to “recommend photos, text, links, communities, short and long form videos, alongside posts from family and friends,” Zuckerberg said, differentiating it from TikTok.
“While we face near term challenges on revenue, the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth,” Zuckerberg added in a statement. “We’re approaching 2023 with a focus on prioritization and efficiency that will help us navigate the current environment and emerge an even stronger company.”
Still, on the company’s earnings call, Zuckerberg also projected some optimism, telling analysts that “our product trends look better from what I see than what some of the commentary suggests.”
On Facebook specifically, the number of people using it each day is the highest it has ever been,” he added, noting that it now has nearly 2 billion users, and that WhatsApp’s fastest-growing region is now North America.
Meta’s quarterly report follows similarly disappointing results from Snap and Alphabet, which have also been feeling the pinch of the advertising environment. Snap cut about 20% of its staff last quarter, and saw its losses widen, as it seeks to restructure. It did, however, see double digit user growth.
Alphabet, the owner of YouTube and Google, also missed expectations, with YouTube revenue falling year-over-year for the first time since it was broken out by the company.
This article was originally published on THR.com.