Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has announced a second round of layoffs in just a few months. About 10,000 jobs will disappear, it says on the Meta website on Tuesday. In addition, 5,000 vacancies that have not yet been filled will be deleted.
In November, Meta already cut 11,000 jobs – 13 percent of the workforce – to work more efficiently. Then the layoffs came as a surprise, but that is not the case this time. Instead, CEO Mark Zuckerberg called 2023 “the year of efficiency,” and that was also hammered internally.
In a new post-Tuesday, Zuckerberg says the moves are necessary to “improve financial performance in a difficult environment so that we can execute on our long-term vision.” There is talk of cancelling low-priority projects, fewer hires and cutting levels of management.
Earlier in the day, it was announced that Meta would phase out the possibilities for NFTs – non-fungible tokens – on its services, Instagram and Facebook. Meta CEO Marc Zuckerberg promised to work on his company’s efficiency and is focusing on priorities. NFTs are, therefore, no longer included. So, for example, in the coming weeks, it will be impossible to share NFTs via Instagram and Facebook.
NFTs are digital certificates of ownership guaranteed using blockchain. The system is applied to digital art and collectables. The NFT hype peaked when a digital artwork sold for over $69 million two years ago.