iWorld
Instagram showcases its passionate community at flagship event
MUMBAI: Instagram today organized its inaugural ‘Instagram Experience’ (IGX) to showcase how it brings you closer to the people and things you love. With most people in the Instagram community using it to pursue their passions, the app highlighted a ‘Born on Instagram’ initiative to discover creators all across India, the ‘Impact, Influencer and Interactivity’ approach to leverage Instagram for business and an ‘Unlabel’ content series, that outlines how it’s the kindest community online.
With over a billion people globally, Instagram is loved for its vibrant community, cultural relevance and visual expression. IGX furthers the engagement with the community, by hosting over 250 creators and marketers, including actors Taapsee Pannu and Priya Varrier, and creators Mallika Dua, Pooja Dhingra and Savi & Vid from Bruised Passports. Also present at the event was Vishal Shah, VP of Product at Instagram, who said, “Instagram is gaining strong momentum both globally and in India. Much like Indian culture, passions pursued by Instagrammers here are the most diverse and represent urban and regional trends. This, combined with the way people freely express themselves on the platform, creates an amazing opportunity for creators and businesses here.”
Regional celebrities like Guru Randhawa, Nusrat Jehan and Kajal Aggarwal and creators like Pawan Kumar from Artkala in Patna, Sujit Bhaktan from Tech Travel Eat in Kerala and Kiran Dutta from Your Bong Guy in Kolkata already use Instagram creatively. At IGX, a new initiative – Born on Instagram – was announced as a recognition of the accelerated creativity in content witnessed all across India. This program will celebrate, discover and showcase creators in big and regional cities, and give them collaboration and mentorship opportunities. This will roll out in 15 cities, beginning this year.
The community also includes businesses of all sizes who leverage Instagram to drive awareness, increase customers and share their story amongst a highly engaged audience. At IGX, the focus was on an approach based on ‘Impact, Influencer and Interactivity’ to enable businesses to best leverage Instagram. This impact is an outcome of the authentic connections between brands and consumers, further showcased by an IPSOS India study where 94% of people said they searched for more information after seeing a product or service on Instagram. 95% of people also said Instagram helps them decide whether to buy a product or service.
Instagram is also a natural home for influencers, and brands leverage associations with them well to increase awareness and build trust. With the launch of Branded Content Ads earlier this year, advertisers now have the ability to promote creators' organic branded content posts as feed and stories ads. This is spurred by interactivity as people increasingly use interactive elements like Poll stickers and Questions, and hence 60% of businesses on Instagram use an interactive element in Stories every month. Interactive ads, starting with Instagram Poll Stickers, work well to that end to enable instant two-way communication and get people involved.
But people will only express themselves if they feel safe and supported and Instagram has recently rolled out the ‘Restrict’ feature, to that end, to protect your account from unwanted interactions. Now, the app unveiled a new content series, ‘Unlabel’, in partnership with Yuvaa, a youth media platform, which features young Indians challenging stereotypes to be their authentic selves.
Instagram has recently made a number of additions to help people express themselves better on the platform. These include the Music Sticker for Stories, a new dark mode, a new Create Mode on camera, the Create Don’t Hate stickers as part of the anti-bullying efforts and the IGTV Series tool for creators.
iWorld
Meta plans 8,000 layoffs in new AI-led restructuring wave
First phase from May 20 may cut 10 per cent workforce amid AI pivot.
MUMBAI: At Meta, the future may be artificial but the cuts are very real. The social media giant is reportedly preparing a fresh round of layoffs, with an initial wave expected to impact around 8,000 employees as it doubles down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. According to a Reuters report, the first phase of job cuts is slated to begin on May 20, targeting roughly 10 per cent of Meta’s global workforce. With nearly 79,000 employees on its rolls as of December 31, the move marks one of the company’s most significant workforce reductions in recent years.
And this may only be the beginning. Sources indicate that additional layoffs are being planned for the second half of the year, although the scale and timing remain fluid, likely to be shaped by how Meta’s AI capabilities evolve in the coming months. Earlier reports had suggested that total cuts in 2026 could reach 20 per cent or more of its workforce.
The restructuring comes as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg continues to steer the company towards an AI-first operating model, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the transition. Internally, this shift is already visible: teams within Reality Labs have been reorganised, engineers have been moved into a newly formed Applied AI unit, and a Meta Small Business division has been created to align with broader structural changes.
The trend is hardly isolated. Across the tech sector, companies are trimming headcount while investing aggressively in automation. Amazon, for instance, has reportedly cut around 30,000 corporate roles nearly 10 per cent of its white-collar workforce citing efficiency gains driven by AI. Data from Layoffs.fyi shows over 73,000 tech employees have already lost jobs this year, compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
For Meta, the move echoes its earlier “year of efficiency” in 2022–23, when about 21,000 roles were eliminated amid slowing growth and market pressures. This time, however, the backdrop is different. The company is financially stronger, generating over $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year, with shares up 3.68 per cent year-to-date though still below last summer’s peak.
That contrast underlines the shift underway. These layoffs are less about survival and more about reinvention. As Meta restructures itself around AI from autonomous coding agents to advanced machine learning systems, the question is no longer whether the company will change, but how many roles will be left unchanged when it does.
