Snap Shutters Web3 Division as Part of Broader Job Cuts
Earlier this week, Snapchat announced that it would be cutting over 1000 jobs, as it works to counter losses due, essentially, to lower than anticipated ad spend. In order to do this, Snap explained that it would be focusing on three specific areas to hone in future development.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said, “We are restructuring our business to increase focus on our three strategic priorities: community growth, revenue growth, and augmented reality. Projects that don’t directly contribute to these areas will be discontinued or receive substantially reduced investment.”
Which makes sense – community and revenue growth provide immediate business benefit, while AR remains Snap’s biggest opportunity moving forward, and is the area that it’s continued to lead the way on.
But that also means that one particularly interesting area of Snap’s business is being cut as part of the reshuffle. “Snapchat parent Snap Inc. appears to be shuttering its web3 team in light of a company-wide restructuring plan.”
Eventually, Snap would have theoretically also been looking to facilitate more direct connection with NFT projects, so that expansions like this would be native to Snap itself.
But that, seemingly, now won’t go ahead – or at least, not to the extent that it likely could have via Snap’s own, dedicated Web3 initiative.
Indeed, one of the leaders of Snap’s Web3 division Jake Sheinman tweeted this following Snap’s announcement:
“After 4 years at Snap, today is my last day. As a result of the company restructure, decisions were made to sunset our web3 team. The same team that I co-founded last year with other pirates who believed in digital ownership and the role that AR can play to support that.”
This is the question many now have – what does Snap’s decision to step away from Web3 mean in the broader context of these new, connective, collaborative opportunities?
Really, it probably doesn’t mean a heap. Snap could still facilitate most of these projects via its existing AR tools and collaborations, in the same way that it works with movie studios, for example, to create AR tie-ins. It probably doesn’t need a dedicated Web3 team in this sense, as these processes, for the most part, are not unique to Web3 initiatives.
Snap Shutters Web3 Division as Part of Broader Job Cuts
Where it does lead to more questions is around the next stage of digital product integrations, and the facilitation of such through Snap’s tools. As noted, Snap has also been investing in digital clothing, with a range of high profile brand partenerships on items for Bitmoji avatars.
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That, theoretically, could be the ideal linking point for Web3 projects, with people creating their digital likeness on Snap that they could then use in the coming metaverse experience.
Bitmoji characters are already hugely popular as a form of digital expression.
