Meta technology chief Bosworth implies company has lost focus
Andrew Bosworth AKA Boz, an advertising expert for Facebook, gives a talk at the Online Marketing Rockstars marketing trade show in Hamburg, Germany, 03 March 2017. Photo: Christian Charisius/dpa | usage worldwide (Photo by Christian Charisius/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Christian Charisius | picture alliance | Getty Images
Meta technology chief Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, one of Facebook’s earliest employees, wrote on his personal blog over the weekend that the company was more focused in its initial days, and he described some of the problems that come with getting big.
In a post titled “Focus,” Bosworth contrasted the years of startup life, when he got little sleep, kept a poor diet and had “no hobbies,” with the mature company that has many people weighing in on product features and enough money to pay for less important things.
“Resources and time were so tight that you could feel the weight of all the things you weren’t working on,” wrote Bosworth, who started the post by saying he was “something like” the 10th engineer at the company. “You had real conviction that the thing you were doing was the most important thing.”
Bosworth’s post landed just days before Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings reports, which is scheduled to land after the close of trading on Wednesday. The company is expected to report its third consecutive quarterly sales drop, with analysts projecting another decline in the first quarter. Meta lost two-thirds of its value last year.
Bosworth was promoted to CTO in 2021, replacing Mike Schroepfer, who had been with the company since 2008. Bosworth is overseeing Meta’s ambitious and costly endeavor to develop the digital world of the metaverse, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said will define the company’s future.
While he acknowledged that he doesn’t miss startup life, “I do miss the profound sense of focus,” Bosworth wrote.
With limited money and resources, “we were constantly tight on servers, on memory, and on bandwidth,” he said.
But over time, Facebook experienced some product sprawl, putting effort into too many different projects. He used nonprofits as an example, noting that in the early days employees would ask Zuckerberg to support a group or cause.
An avatar of Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., speaks during the virtual Meta Connect event in New York, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“Mark would always say no,” Bosworth wrote. “He would explain that it isn’t that we don’t care about good causes, it is that our comparative advantage wasn’t going to be making good donations.”
That changed as the company got bigger, more employees asked for Facebook contribute and there was enough money to do it. And considering that there’s nothing bad about supporting nonprofits, “we just stopped saying ‘no.'”
“I picked a cultural example here but the exact same thing happens in our products at a larger scale and with higher stakes,” Bosworth wrote.
Bosworth doesn’t specify any areas where the current version of Meta lacks focus, and he says the company has a “core feature offering that is strong.” He did offer an example of how the company can still get off track.
“A small feature idea comes up that serves a subset of the market,” Bosworth wrote. “But it isn’t too hard to do and it isn’t a bad thing, so we indulge. “
He continued, “Repeat that thought process a hundred times and you have a cluttered UI, a large team, a slow product, and no obvious path forward.”
Meta investors have been urging the company to focus on its core online ad business, which has come under pressure from a number of challenges, including a weak economy and increased competition. Brad Gerstner, the CEO of Altimeter Capital and a Meta investor, wrote in an open letter to the company in October that the company needs to “get fit and focused,” and he was critical of the hefty investment in the nascent metaverse.
In November, Meta said it would lay off over 11,000 employees as part of the company’s plans to cut costs amid a tough digital advertising market.
Tik Tok creators gather before a press conference to voice their opposition to the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” pending crackdown legislation on TikTok in the House of Representatives, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 12, 2024.
Craig Hudson | Reuters
The Supreme Court on Friday will hear oral arguments in the case involving the future of TikTok in the U.S., which could ban the popular app as soon as next week.
The justices will consider whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the law that targets TikTok’s ban and imposes harsh civil penalties for app “entities” that continue to carry the service after Jan.19, violates the U.S. Constitution’s free speech protections.
It’s unclear when the court will hand down a decision, and if China’s ByteDance continues to refuse to divest TikTok to an American company, it faces a complete ban nationwide.
What will change about the user experience?
The roughly 115 million U.S. TikTok monthly active users could face a range of scenarios depending on when the Supreme Court hands down a decision.
If no word comes before the law takes effect on Jan. 19 and the ban goes through, it’s possible that users would still be able to post or engage with the app if they already have it downloaded. However, those users would likely be unable to update or redownload the app after that date, multiple legal experts said.
Thousands of short-form video creators who generate income from TikTok through ad revenue, paid partnerships, merchandise and more will likely need to transition their businesses to other platforms, like YouTube or Instagram.
“Shutting down TikTok, even for a single day, would be a big deal, not just for people who create content on TikTok, but everyone who shares or views content,” said George Wang, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute who helped write the institute’s amicus briefs on the case.
“It sets a really dangerous precedent for how we regulate speech online,” Wang said.
Who supports and opposes the ban?
Dozens of high-profile amicus briefs from organizations, members of Congress and President-elect Donald Trump were filed supporting both the government and ByteDance.
The government, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, alleges that until ByteDance divests TikTok, the app remains a “powerful tool for espionage” and a “potent weapon for covert influence operations.”
Trump’s brief did not voice support for either side, but it did ask the court to oppose banning the platform and allow him to find a political resolution that allows the service to continue while addressing national security concerns.
The short-form video app played a notable role in both Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ presidential campaigns in 2024, and it’s one of the most common news sources for younger voters.
In a September Truth Social post, Trump wrote in all caps Americans who want to save TikTok should vote for him. The post was quoted in his amicus brief.
What comes next?
It’s unclear when the Supreme Court will issue its ruling, but the case’s expedited hearing has some predicting that the court could issue a quick ruling.
The case will have “enormous implications” since TikTok’s user base in the U.S. is so large, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law.
“It’s unprecedented for the government to prohibit platforms for speech, especially one so many people use,” Chemerinsky said. “Ultimately, this is a tension between free speech issues on the one hand and claims of national security on the other.”
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