Zuckerberg says WhatsApp business chat will drive sales sooner than metaverse - Yahoo! Voices

By Paresh Dave and Katie Paul

(Reuters) - Meta Platforms Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told employees connected Thursday that WhatsApp and Messenger would thrust the company's adjacent question of income growth, arsenic helium sought to assuage concerns astir Meta's finances aft its archetypal wide layoffs.

Zuckerberg, addressing pointed questions astatine a company-wide gathering a week aft Meta said it would laic disconnected 11,000 workers, described the brace of messaging apps arsenic being "very aboriginal successful monetizing" compared to its advertizing juggernauts Facebook and Instagram, according to remarks heard by Reuters.

"We speech a batch astir the precise semipermanent opportunities similar the metaverse, but the world is that concern messaging is astir apt going to beryllium the adjacent large pillar of our concern arsenic we enactment to monetize WhatsApp and Messenger more," helium said.

Meta enables immoderate consumers to talk and transact with merchants done the chat apps, including a caller diagnostic announced Thursday successful Brazil.

The institution did not instantly respond to a petition for remark connected Thursday's interior forum.

Zuckerberg's comments determination bespeak a displacement successful code and accent aft focusing heavy connected extended world hardware and bundle investments since announcing a semipermanent ambition to physique retired an immersive metaverse past year.

Investors person questioned the contented of that determination arsenic Meta's halfway advertizing concern has struggled this year, much than halving its banal price.

In his remarks to employees, Zuckerberg played down however overmuch the institution was spending successful Reality Labs, the portion liable for its metaverse investments.

People were Meta's biggest expense, followed by superior expenditure, the immense bulk of which went to infrastructure to enactment its suite of societal media apps, helium said. About 20% of Meta's fund was going to Reality Labs.

Within Reality Labs, the portion was spending implicit fractional of its fund connected augmented world (AR), with astute glasses products continuing to look "over the adjacent fewer years" and immoderate "truly great" AR glasses aboriginal successful the decade, Zuckerberg said.

"This is successful immoderate ways is the astir challenging enactment ... but I besides deliberation it's the astir invaluable imaginable portion of the enactment implicit time," helium said.

About 40% of Reality Labs' fund went toward virtual reality, portion astir 10% was spent connected futuristic societal platforms specified arsenic the virtual satellite it calls Horizon.

Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth, who runs Reality Labs, said AR glasses request to beryllium much utile than mobile phones to entreaty to imaginable customers and conscionable a higher barroom for attractiveness.

Bosworth said helium was wary of processing "industrial applications" for the devices, describing that arsenic "niche," and wanted to enactment focused connected gathering for a wide audience.

(Reporting by Katie Paul and Paresh Dave; Editing by Peter Henderson and Kenneth Maxwell)