Tough times have fallen on social media platform Meta as the company is planning layoffs which could effect thousands of workers, according to a Bloomberg News report.
Analyst Emma Mohr-McClune, in a podcast for GlobalData Thematic Research, claims she has trepidation about a metaverse winter and believes that it will stem from Meta itself.
For example, failed efforts from Meta such as projects like ‘metaversities,’ and big marketing campaigns have industry insiders questioning whether or not CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s approach is working.
Mohr-McClune was interested to see if Meta shares will plunge this year and if the company’s investors will kick up a storm.
“They will want to know what he [Zuckerberg] is doing with that $100bn investment and when they’ll see some monetisation from it.”
However, with the company now adding to the 13% of Meta workers who were already laid off in November, 2022 it seems like an investor storm could be likely.
Global Data Tech, Media, & Telecom Predictions (TMT) 2023 stress that, “interoperability will be key to the metaverse, but it will not be achieved in 2023. A shift in Big Tech’s philosophy from centralisation to decentralisation is unlikely as the metaverse is still in its infancy.”
However, despite Zuckerberg’s best efforts – the big metaverse chill may still bring more layoffs, misinformation and company privacy scandals as according to reports, “without a large audience, brands will not be interested.”
The metaverse has been promoted as a revolution in how humans socialise, consume media and work,” and without this evidence it will be hard to see how Meta can finally start monetising its efforts.
GlobalData is the parent company of Verdict and its sister publications.