Your guide to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Web 3.0

Meta’s workforce ballooned in recent years as the Facebook parent company It expressed its hopes for the metaverse—but recent moves suggest that it is feeling the sting of changing tech trends and rough market conditions. Today’s announcement by the company comes a day after it had announced that it was closing its doors. “winding down” support for NFTs.

Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg Today’s post was written by me Meta will lose approximately 10,000 additional employees in multiple waves over the next months. There will also be closing of about 5,000 positions on its current open listings. Its recruiting department will be affected this week, as well as its tech groups in April and business groups May.

Meta had previously laid off approximately 11,000 employees in November. This represented about 13% of the company’s workforce at that time. CNBC. As of December 31, 2022, Meta reported having a headcount of 86,482 people across all divisions—a 20% jump from the year prior—but said that the tally still included most of the people included in the November layoffs.

Zuckerberg framed the latest cuts as being 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 all this mean? meta then? Meta Made a lot more noise in 2021 The company’s name was changed to reflect Zuckerberg’s vision of the future 3D internet. This news sparked interest in the area. Web3 You can also play metaverse games. NFT plots in virtual land The value of the property is increasing.

But metaverse buzz quieted down in 2022 amid an array of backlash—to An immersive internet is the concept, Meta’s early version of itThe, and Digital real estate is rising in cost.

Meta reaffirmed its focus to build the metaverse late last year, but it has increasingly pivoted its messaging towards the renewed fervor around artificial intelligence (AI) thanks to the success of rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Indeed, Zuckerberg’s post today mentions AI ahead of the metaverse among technologies that Meta is focused on.

“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.”

In Meta’s Q4 2022 earnings call on February 1, 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 also stressed that Meta continues to invest via its Reality Labs division in virtual reality and mixed-reality headsets to help build a future immersive internet. However, Zuckerberg added that “most people are going to experience the metaverse for the first time on phones and start building up their digital identities across our apps.”

Yesterday, Meta announced that it was “winding down” support for NFTs on its platforms less than one year after entering the space. First Instagram In May 2022, a NFT trial was launchedThis allows selected users to upload their artwork and collectibles to the photo-sharing platform. Later, Facebook added the same feature.

Instagram announced in November that it would allow creators to upload photos. Polygon lets users create their own NFTsAnonymous Ethereum Network scaling, then launch NFT mints exclusively from prominent creators like photographer Isaac “Drift” Wright Refik Anadol, an AI artist

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 He emphasized the benefits of interoperability that he believed were important.The firm has yet not to describe the full extent of Web3 technology in its plans.

Web3 metaverse builders consider NFTs key to their vision for an open metaverse, in which users can bring their own avatars and apparel across online platforms. But when tech giants like Meta and Microsoft have announced metaverse plans, they’ve signaled interest in interoperable standards—but Blockchain networks and assets are not yet fully accepted..

Meta declined to comment further. Decrypt Regarding the effect of layoffs on its metaverse push and how its NFT Announcement ties in with that.

Based on today’s announcement and other recent comments, Meta still says that it’s building towards the metaverse. Meta has consistently framed it as a long-term process, but that message is especially being amplified as AI developments take greater precedence across the tech world—and NFTs won’t be a key factor in that push, at least for now.