Ten thousand more workers they were fired in Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as announced Mark Zuckerberg. The reason given by the billionaire lies in inflation, among other economic problems in the United States.
But some analysts they point to the Metaverse and various Zuckerberg errors as the real causes.
Meta has struggled to cut spending since at least mid-2022. Before and during the pandemic increased its workforce and invested in the Metaverse, in NFTs and cryptocurrencies.
But with ad revenue dwindling, and competition for apps like TikTok increasing, everything became more difficult.
The Metaverse, a black hole for Mark Zuckerberg’s investments
The commitment to the Metaverse meant a huge investment by Zuckerberg, something that is now taking its toll. In accordance with Business Insider, Reality Labs, a division of Meta, lost almost 14 billion dollars, and it is expected that by 2023 they will be 15 billion dollars more.
In the future, to continue with the idea, would increase the figure to 20 billion dollars annual.
Virtual reality headsets, special lenses, brand and name change, Investments, investments and more investments.
Quietly, in recent months, Zuckerberg has toned down the topic of the Metaverse, now focusing on Artificial Intelligence such as ChatGPT.
The company will seek to turn towards “a new high-end product group in Meta, focused on Generative Artificial Intelligence, to enhance our work in this area,” Zuckerberg said.
“In the short term, we will focus on building creative and expressive tools. In the long term, we will focus on developing AI characters that can help people in various ways.” added the tycoon.
The pressure on the workers of Meta
But everything done in the Metaverse became a loss, without tangible results and with less and less interest from potential investors.
In the words of Celia Pearce, professor of game design at Norteastern, “It’s just amazing to me that people with so many resources can screw things up so spectacularly when the opportunity to do something great comes along.”
The worst thing is that the main affected are the workers. After the layoffs in November, where 11,000 people were left on the streets, a huge group that remained in Meta fell victim to the pressure. When would it be their turn to go? Would they lose their job at some point?
Finally, it happened this year. And the situation could not be worse.
All because of Mark Zuckerberg’s mistakes.