By now, you must be aware of how keen Meta is on cutting back on costs. Therefore, when the firm recently confirmed it was scaling back its new product experimentation (NPE) team, many were not surprised.
This team was solely designed for figuring out what’s clicking in the world of new social media trends, even before they gained fame. But it appears that the thought process didn’t quite go down right, and now, it’s better to bid farewell than incur more financial loss.
There were a number of different launches that took center stage with this feature. Unfortunately, most of the apps they introduced failed miserably or shut down completely. In the past two years, that’s nearly 14 different apps in total.
All types of genres were experimented with, like music, sports, fashion, gaming, audio, and more. And while I do feel the efforts put in were plenty, it just wasn’t their time to shine.
Now, the company says the decision to scale it back further is to see how much more it can narrow down its focus.
As recently witnessed in an internal memo sent out by the company’s CPO to employees, a new mission with a target has been provided. And in this case, there will be more emphasis on short-form content than anything else.
But the news is interesting because in December last year, the firm announced how it would change its main focus to something else. And that was better enhancing communities that Meta feels are often neglected or overlooked in today’s world.
This didn’t do quite well, as observed with the way Instagram failed miserably at trying to imitate TikTok and introduce short-form video content like them.
Meanwhile, it’s more bad news for Meta as a recently leaked internal document obtained by the Wall Street Journal highlighted how people on TikTok spend almost 10 times the duration watching TikTok content than they do seeing Instagram’s Reels.
And the news couldn’t have come at a worse time because we’re now hearing more about how engagement on the app for the Reels has fallen immensely too. This was shown by a recent report that highlighted how creators are getting almost zero engagement on the feature.
At the same time, there is a lot of chit-chat about how users aren’t fond of using the app as much as they are of fellow archrivals YouTube and TikTok. Therefore, Instagram is certainly lagging behind, which could spell danger for Meta as Facebook incurred major revenue drops this year.
Only time can tell whether or not this is the right decision to cover up losses through scaling back NPE teams. Who knows, they might be the ones to really come up with a strong point and crack the code to short-form video success.
So, it might prove to be in the company’s favor to realign teams where needed. Nothing is permanent in the tech world, and we might see some more changes with Meta’s upcoming event showcasing its VR products and technology.
Read next: Major Tech Giants Including Meta And YouTube Unite To Eradicate Online Extremism
This team was solely designed for figuring out what’s clicking in the world of new social media trends, even before they gained fame. But it appears that the thought process didn’t quite go down right, and now, it’s better to bid farewell than incur more financial loss.
There were a number of different launches that took center stage with this feature. Unfortunately, most of the apps they introduced failed miserably or shut down completely. In the past two years, that’s nearly 14 different apps in total.
All types of genres were experimented with, like music, sports, fashion, gaming, audio, and more. And while I do feel the efforts put in were plenty, it just wasn’t their time to shine.
Now, the company says the decision to scale it back further is to see how much more it can narrow down its focus.
As recently witnessed in an internal memo sent out by the company’s CPO to employees, a new mission with a target has been provided. And in this case, there will be more emphasis on short-form content than anything else.
But the news is interesting because in December last year, the firm announced how it would change its main focus to something else. And that was better enhancing communities that Meta feels are often neglected or overlooked in today’s world.
This didn’t do quite well, as observed with the way Instagram failed miserably at trying to imitate TikTok and introduce short-form video content like them.
Meanwhile, it’s more bad news for Meta as a recently leaked internal document obtained by the Wall Street Journal highlighted how people on TikTok spend almost 10 times the duration watching TikTok content than they do seeing Instagram’s Reels.
And the news couldn’t have come at a worse time because we’re now hearing more about how engagement on the app for the Reels has fallen immensely too. This was shown by a recent report that highlighted how creators are getting almost zero engagement on the feature.
At the same time, there is a lot of chit-chat about how users aren’t fond of using the app as much as they are of fellow archrivals YouTube and TikTok. Therefore, Instagram is certainly lagging behind, which could spell danger for Meta as Facebook incurred major revenue drops this year.
Only time can tell whether or not this is the right decision to cover up losses through scaling back NPE teams. Who knows, they might be the ones to really come up with a strong point and crack the code to short-form video success.
So, it might prove to be in the company’s favor to realign teams where needed. Nothing is permanent in the tech world, and we might see some more changes with Meta’s upcoming event showcasing its VR products and technology.
Read next: Major Tech Giants Including Meta And YouTube Unite To Eradicate Online Extremism
