In the year since Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would change its name to Meta and become a “metaverse company,” the company is still having a rocky launch.
Last October, Zuckerberg sketched a vision of a utopian future many years off in which billions of people would inhabit immersive digital environments for hours on end, working, socializing, and playing games inside virtual and augmented worlds.
Billions of dollars and thousands of hires later, Zuckerberg’s dreams have not yet been achieved. Instead, the company has been flogged by a rough year and growing frustration among its employees.
Meta employees have complained about frequent strategy shifts that seem tied to Zuckerberg’s whims rather than a cohesive plan.
At the executive level, people are butting heads over the metaverse strategy. One senior leader complained that the amount of money the company had spent on unproven projects made him “sick to my stomach.”
Current and former employees and internal communication documents show Meta’s ongoing struggle to reshape the company.
Meta is expected to unveil a new V.R. headset on Tuesday at a developer conference, along with other new metaverse features. The stakes are high for Zuckerberg and his company, which is racing to transform itself to make up for declines in other parts of its business.
Facebook and Instagram’s popularity is decreasing. The two social media platforms are the big money makers for Meta, and TikTok is siphoning younger users away. Apple made privacy changes to its mobile operating system recently as well, which have cost Meta billions of dollars in advertising revenue.
Meta’s stock price has tumbled nearly 60 percent in the past year. The flailing stock is a reflection not just of broader market turbulence, but of some investors’ skepticism that the metaverse will be highly lucrative anytime soon.
Only a couple of weeks ago, Meta announced that it would freeze most hiring. Zuckerberg warned employees that layoffs may be coming.
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