Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
Instagram director Adam Mosseri is moving from San Francisco to London, in a bid to boost parent company By Meta ambitions to lure users away from TikTok as it struggles with user decline.
Mosseri is moving to London later this year and the move will be temporary, a Meta spokesperson confirmed to CNBC. News is first report by Financial Times.
London is Meta’s largest engineering hub outside of the US, with over 4,000 employees, including a dedicated Instagram product team and roles focused on developing services for creators. This is also where the company’s Workplace messaging app was first developed.
Meta says Mosseri will support the company’s London-based creator team, which is focused on helping certain users monetize their posts and countering TikTok’s rapid rise. The company is trying to reposition itself as a group of platforms that enable e-commerce in the online universe known as the “metaverse,” rather than simply as a tool for advertisers to target. digitally to everyone.
Meta has struggled to convince investors to pivot to the metaverse, with the company’s stock falling more heavily than Alphabet’s Big Tech amid a broader tech stock downturn and as apps its position lost to the Chinese-owned TikTok. The company reported a revenue decline for the first time in the second quarter and gave weak direction for the next quarter. Its push into the metaverse has proven costly, with the virtual reality division losing $2.8 billion in the three months to June.
To counter TikTok’s massive growth, Meta sought to mimic the platform with tweaks to its own apps, including creating its own short video feature called “Shorts.” “. The company also made some controversial changes to Instagram, prioritizing algorithmically generated content over posts from friends. This move resulted in backlash from users, including Kim Kardashian.
Mosseri’s move can be seen as an attempt to appeal to UK regulators. However, the bill’s progress has been hit by the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the subsequent search for a new leader.
It also signals a broader push from Meta to remote working. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, CEO Meta Mark Zuckerberg stands out as one of the biggest advocates of remote work among Silicon Valley leaders. In 2020, he began allowing some employees to work from home permanently, before expanding the policy to include all employees. The company also developed an app called Horizon Worlds that allows people to hold group meetings through its virtual reality headset.
