Is Zuckerberg's Meta In Crisis? Company Tells Employees 'Serious Times' Ahead

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is warning its employees of "serious times" to come in the near future. According to an internal memo shared among Meta employees this week, the company is cutting down on hiring and expenditure.

"I have to underscore that we are in serious times here and the headwinds are fierce," Meta's Chief Product Officer Chris Cox wrote. In the memo seen by The Verge, Cox adds the following - "We need to execute flawlessly in an environment of slower growth, where teams should not expect vast influxes of new engineers and budgets."

Currently, Meta is in the eye of the storm of privacy-related concerns. Regulators around the world are cracking down on American Big Tech in hopes of seeing more accountability and action. Due to changes in privacy laws around the world, Meta's ad business has taken a hit.

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Meta's priorities are changing quickly

What does a free service that depends on private user data for revenue do, then? In the memo, Cox mentions that monetising Reels is Meta's priority at the moment.

In addition, Cox highlighted areas that need more investment from Meta - AI, messaging, Reels, monetisation, and new privacy requirements. In essence, Meta wants its current employees to pull up their socks without expecting any additions - be in the form of manpower or financial incentives.

Also read: Hate Speech On Facebook Up 38%, Violent Content To 86% On Instagram In April, Says Meta

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This isn't peculiarly surprising, given the company had frozen hiring across many teams in May. Slow growth of Meta's metaverse investments are also worrying the company heads.

Let's not forget that Meta's flagship service Facebook suffered a massive hit over the last year. For the first time ever, company's growth is slowing down after 18 years. This could be due to a variety of reasons - gen z prefer more hip platforms like TikTok and Facebook's parent company Meta has suffered numerous setbacks for how it tackles privacy concerns.

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Also read: What Are 'Tamagotchi Kids,' The Virtual Replacement For Children In The Metaverse?

Apple made a few changes this year. For starters, it made it harder for apps like Facebook to track iPhone users. Meta had earlier claimed that this alone would cost the company $10 billion in advertising revenue this year.

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In the meanwhile, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger have managed to keep adding new users to the service. What do you think about Meta's slower approach? Let us know in the comments below. For more in the world of technology and science, keep reading Indiatimes.com.

References

Sato, M., & Heath, A. (2022, June 30). Meta warns employees of ¡®serious times¡¯ in internal memo listing key product bets. The Verge.

Paul, K. (2022, June 30). EXCLUSIVE-Meta girds for ¡°fierce¡± headwinds, slower growth in second half -memo. Reuters.