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Shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) rose on Thursday after Bloomberg reported the technology company was planning to cut spending across its division by 10%, with as much as 30% cuts to its virtual reality group, which includes the so-called metaverse. These cuts could potentially include layoffs, which could come as early as January, and are part of the company’s 2026 budget, according to the article. Metathe owner of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and WhatsAppdevelops metaverse technologies, such as the Horizon Worlds platform, its flagship virtual-reality game. Fast Company has reached out to Meta for comment. Meta stock rose 5.7% in early trading Thursday, before settling up a few percentage points. At the time of this writing on Thursday afternoon, Meta’s stock price was up by about just under 4%. Bloomberg cited anonymous sources and said Wall Street investors reportedly sees the division “as a drain on resources,” while internet watchers have concerns about VR’s ability to safeguard children. The news is significant because the metaverse is widely considered a pet project of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had previously identified it as the future of Meta, even changing Facebook’s name to Meta for that very reason. Zuckerberg has also reportedly spent billions and employed thousands to make this dream come to fruition, according to The New York Times. Ultimately, however, it seems critics and young consumers have not embraced the metaverse and Horizon Worlds as the company had hoped. Meta financials Meta’s third-quarter earnings for 2025 beat analyst sales estimates, but it also reported a one-time $15.93 billion tax charge. The company’s revenue grew 26.2% year-over-year to $51.24 billion, beating the estimated $49.41 billion, with earnings per share coming in at $7.25 adjusted, beating analyst expectations of $6.69. In the earnings report, Meta said the company plans to spend up to $72 billion on artificial intelligence in 2025.
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E-Commerce
The numbers are in for Spotify Wrapped: After the streaming music app dropped its popular year-in-review recap for 2025, the company said it has already seen a huge increase in user engagement, hitting 200 million users just 24 hours after the recap’s release, a 19% increase year-over-year (YOY). Compare that with last year, when it took 62 hours to hit that same number. Why the uptick in user engagement? One reason could be because the platform is growing. A look at the numbers shows Spotify’s monthly active users grew 11% YOY to 713 million in Q3 of 2025, according to the company’s third quarter earnings report. Spotify Wrapped is for sharing Sharing is caring, and this year’s Spotify Wrapped sharing features seem to be working. According to the company, 500 million users shared their stories all over social media in the first 24 hours, an overall increase of 41% YOY from 2024 (I was, of course, one of them). Those shares included screenshots of different features, such as top songs (for me, it was “Promises, Promises”), top artist (“The Psychedelic Furs”), top albums (“The Life of a Showgirl”), top genres (“New Wave”), and listening minutes (“11,721”). While the numbers increased across the board globally, India, Indonesia, Japan, Colombia, Thailand and the U.S. saw the most growth. This year, we pushed to make Wrapped bigger, bolder, and rooted in human creativity and connection,” Marc Hazan, senior vice president of marketing and partnerships at Spotify said. “That spirit drove the record numbers were celebrating. Spotify is where people proudly express who they are through the music, podcasts and books they love most.” Age is just a number One complaint, albeit a funny one, is that Spotify Wrapped’s “listening age” feature, which predicts your age based on your listening data, is making people older than they are. On Bluesky, people are posting screenshots of their Spotify “age,” which for some millennials and Gen Xers, is hitting upwards of 82. (At 61, it looks like I am in good company!)
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E-Commerce
U.S. applications for unemployment benefits fell to their lowest level in more than three years during Thanksgiving week, potentially complicating the Federal Reserves upcoming decision on interest rates. The number of Americans applying for jobless benefits for the week ending Nov. 29 fell to 191,000 from the previous weeks 218,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Thats the lowest level since September 24, 2022, when claims came in at 189,000. Analysts surveyed by the data provider FactSet had forecast initial claims of 221,000. Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide, said that unemployment benefit filings are often distorted by the Thanksgiving holiday, which can cause some people who may have lost jobs to delay filing claims. Still, the low claims figure also suggests that overall layoffs remain muted, despite the high-profile announcements. Hiring is also sluggish, which makes finding a job for those out of work challenging. The labor market is kind of frozen, Bostjancic said. Companies are in wait-and-see mode. Applications for unemployment aid are viewed as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. The job cuts announced recently by large companies such as UPS, General Motors, Amazon, and Verizon typically take weeks or months to fully implement and may not be reflected in Thursdays data. For now, the U.S. job market appears stuck in a low-hire, low-fire state that has kept the unemployment rate historically low. On Wednesday, private payroll data firm ADP estimated U.S. job losses of 32,000 in November. The surprisingly weak report may be discouraging for people looking for jobs, but it bolstered expectations that the Fed will cut its main interest rate next week. Its not clear how much weight this weeks layoff figures will carry with the Fed as the numbers can be volatile and prone to revisions. Complicating the Feds upcoming decision is inflation, which remains above the central banks 2% target. The Feds preferred measure of inflation will be released in a government report on Friday and will also be factored into its rate call on Wednesday. Two weeks ago, the government said that hiring picked up a bit in September, when employers added 119,000 new jobs. That mixed report, which also showed employers had shed jobs in August, was delayed due to the government shutdown. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest level in four years. Novembers comprehensive jobs data has been delayed for release until later this month, after the Feds meeting, also due to the government shutdown. The government also recently reported that retail sales slowed in September after three months of healthy increases. Consumer confidence has plunged to its second-lowest level in five years, while wholesale inflation eased a bit. The data suggests that both the economy and inflation are slowing, which has boosted financial markets expectations that the Federal Reserve will reduce its key interest rate at its meeting next week. If the Fed does reduce its benchmark rate next week, it would be the third cut of the year as it attempts to support a job market that has been slowing for months. Thursday’s report from Labor also showed that the four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, fell by 9,500 to 214,750. The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the previous week ending Nov. 22 dipped by 4,000 to 1.94 million, the government said. Matt Ott, AP business writer AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
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