With Mark Zuckerberg's fortune down by half to $71Bn, Meta now plans to cut costs by 10%

Meta plans to cut operating costs by at least 10% in the coming months as a knock on effect of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plummeting fortunes at the social media company. This year alone, his wealth tied to Meta stock was down 58%. The cuts will be to staff levels and by reshuffling departments. Employees in those departments affected will be able to reapply for other roles in other departments. In Q2 in 2022, Meta had increased their staff numbers by 32% to 83,553.

Meta, Facebook's parent company, is aiming to cut its costs by at least 10% later this year, as a direct result of Zuckerberg's $71Bn stock loss in Meta announced recently. Any staff affected by the reshuffle will be given the chance to apply for other Meta roles within a 30 day window. Meta does not plan to employ any new employees from outside the company and has put a freeze on external hiring. According to Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton, Meta would need to reallocate resources to confront stalling growth. "We've been public about the need for our teams to shift to meet these challenges", Clayton explained.

There is no word from Meta as to the number of employees that will be affected by any reshuffle, but it will allow Meta to retain as many staff needed by re-employing them in other roles and in some cases by creating new roles.

Zuckerberg's vast wealth is almost entirely tied up in Meta stock and he holds 350 million shares. At the start of 2022, Meta announced that it had seen no growth in its monthly Facebook users and this news triggered a stock fall in Meta, wiping $31 billion off Zuckerberg's fortune in a record single day on Wall Street.

Meta has not been performing as well as other tech stocks, down 57% so far in 2022, with Alphabet (Google's parent company) down 29%, Amazon down 26% and Apple down just 14%. So there is nervous anticipation as to what will happen next amongst these stocks, but Meta has so far taken the biggest hit during 2022.

With so much competition in social media platforms now and with an ever-expanding list of social media platforms, it seems that Meta's popularity may now be on the decline, as people swap to whatever new platform is trending and it seems that audience number statistics now play a much greater part in determining the daily values of these social media platforms, with share prices fluctuating rapidly.