Meta Freezes Hiring for Facebook Dating and Other Divisons

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and other popular social platforms, has frozen hiring of new staff for some of its divisions, including Facebook Dating.

Meta’s stock price is down almost 43 percent this year, and the company has gotten serious about streamlining its business. It has stopped hiring for certain engineering roles, but also for recruiters and low-level data scientists, according to The Verge. Facebook Dating has had disappointing results despite high expectations when it first launched.

Reviews show that many Facebook Dating users were having problems matching when they used the service and blamed the problem on fake profiles proliferating on the app. Considering the number of dating apps which use Facebook’s authentication system to verify new profiles, it should be easier for the company to get rid of fake accounts to create a better experience for users.

The rise in fake profiles could be impacting the app’s ability to attract and retain new users, too. There are currently about 300,000 people in New York who use Facebook Dating according to The Verge, compared with about 3 million who use Bumble.

The Verge reported that Meta employees are worried about layoffs happening over the next few months, considering the declining stock value and the hiring freezes, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an all-employee meeting earlier this month that job cuts are not being planned.

“I can’t sit here and make a permanent ongoing promise that as things shift that we won’t have to reconsider that,” Zuckerberg said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Verge. “But what I can tell you is that as of where we sit today, our expectation is not that we’re going to have to do that. And instead, basically what we’re doing is we’re dialing growth to the levels that we think are going to be manageable over time.”

The dating platform was expected to overtake the market when it launched in 2019, intending to compete directly with the most popular apps, such as Tinder. Facebook Dating never took hold with online daters however, even during the pandemic when dating app usage increased across the board. 

Zuckerberg also sought to defend his decisions and relieve employees’ anxiety. He noted the company has been hurt by the popularity of TikTok, the tech market in general and the weariness of investors who sold their tech stocks. Apple’s new ad tracking changes also cost Meta billions of dollars in ad revenue. 

“Whenever we bring growth targets down, I think that you always hear a bunch of speculation…” he noted in the meeting. “But I do want to be clear that we’re in a very strong position and have a very healthy business, and we’re still growing quickly.”