He said that the market for investing in start-ups, which has slowed down markedly in the past six months, was “much healthier now than it was a year ago”.

But Facebook is hardly a start-up, and for years it has offered some of the most competitive benefits in big tech. Stafford also said that as recently as last year, Facebook was approaching staff at his portfolio companies with offers at five times their salary, “which is hard to say no to”.

The company’s multiple big objectives could confuse Zuckerberg’s efforts at effective restructuring. It already appears to be struggling to ape TikTok with its short-form video feature on Instagram called Reels, according to a Wall Street Journal report this month, which cited internal research from Meta. User engagement with Reels declined over the summer, while “most Reel users have no engagement whatsoever”.

Zuckerberg’s expensive shift to the metaverse is also inspiring less and less confidence. He posted a virtual selfie last month that was widely ridiculed for its crude graphics, and the company’s primary focus on headsets as the main gateway to the metaverse looks unwise. The most successful metaverse platforms already exist in 2D, with Roblox and Epic Games’ Fortnight, and have managed to attract millions of regular users with incentives around building and sharing experiences.

Meta has instead focused on the immersive sensation of its virtual reality products, which isn’t all that appealing. Its Horizon Worlds doesn’t have the same kinds of built-in incentives as Roblox and Fortnight, either.

Loading

Zuckerberg needs to work on fixing all of these issues, in addition to finding ways to offset the billions in lost revenue from Apple’s privacy limits on iPhones.

Facebook was once a trillion-dollar company with seemingly unstoppable growth in digital advertising, but that ad growth is slowing, and the company’s other attempts at generating revenue are floundering. Restructuring will help see Meta through, but an economic recession may ultimately accelerate the company’s decline.

Bloomberg

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.