Meta’s (NASDAQ:META) commerce and Fintech lead Stephane Kasriel tweeted yesterday that the social platform is exiting the non fungible token (NFT) market, at least for now.
Kasriel said they are refocusing efforts on supporting creators, people and businesses. This includes “messaging and monetization opps for Reels.
Kasriel added:
“And we’ll continue investing in Fintech tools that people and businesses will need for the future. We’re streamlining payments w/ Meta Pay, making checkout & payouts easier, and investing in messaging payments across Meta.”
In May of 2022, Kasriel published a blog post explaining where the “Metaverse can take Fintech” stating that they were expanding efforts to support greater Web3 compatibility, as “decentralized Web3 technologies like blockchain and NFTs have enabled new ways to exchange value.”
NFTs have been a boom/bust sector of blockchain with massive expansion and then a decline.
Earlier today, Meta revealed another round of layoffs as it targets a more streamlined operation.
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a blog post reflecting on the “year of efficiency.”
Zuckerberg stated:
“We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May. In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes. Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details. Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.”
Zuckerberg said that “flatter is faster,” and they intend to make Meta “flatter by removing multiple layers of management.”
“As part of this, we will ask many managers to become individual contributors. We’ll also have individual contributors report into almost every level — not just the bottom — so information flow between people doing the work and management will be faster.”
He shared that Meta has reduced budgets and shrunk real estate while laying off 13% of their workforce.