Twitter Is Cutting 9% of Its Global Workforce (adweek.com)

Twitter is planning to lay off 9 percent of its global workforce, as the ailing San Francisco tech giant struggles to please Wall Street despite beating earnings expectations. The company officially announced the cuts today in its third-quarter earnings, days after reports began to surface of the impending cuts. AdWeek reports: According to Twitter, the majority of the reductions will take place in its sales, partnerships and marketing divisions in order to "continue to fully fund our highest priorities," according to a letter to shareholders. However, the earnings also came with some good news. Total monthly active users grew for the second consecutive quarter to 317 million users, gaining 4 million over the past three months since its second-quarter results. Daily active users also increased, rising 7 percent year over year. Twitter's revenue totaled $616 million -- an 8 percent increase year over year. Earnings per share totaled 13 cents, beating expectations of 9 cents per share and $606 million in total revenue. However, the company reported profit fell by $103 million.

Comments

Some twitter jobs are safe

[Anonymous Coward]

Bet they keep the shadowbanners and censors on payroll.

Que surprise

[Chas]

The company's hemorrhaging money.
And no company in their right mind would buy them at the artificially (insanely) inflated price they mistakenly think they're worth.
They've been getting negative press as a bastion of partisan censorship, further alienating users.
So they have to shore up the bottom line somehow..

Re:Que surprise

[MBGMorden]

It's not surprising - Twitter is a dot-com bubble company a decade after it happened.

That was the ORIGINAL problem with many internet companies. They could find out how to draw in lots of users and get popular - they just couldn't find a way to actually make any money from it.

Depending on the site, SOME companies can make enough off ad revenue to be successful, but Twitter has never managed to do so. And I'm not sure it will work there. With their format of limited post length and being largely a spew of conciousness they've to some degree attracted a userbase that has a short attention span. It's hard to effectively put ads in front of them.

There are plenty of internet based companies that have figured out how to thrive - Amazon, Ebay, Netflix, Google, etc - but I'm not sure Twitter will last. If it goes away I don't think there will be too much of a problem though. Social media as a phenomenon will likely continue just fine. Facebook (who also runs Instagram) is operating in the black.

Twitter is way too big (3900+ employees?)

[DatbeDank]

According to this link, back in 2015 Twitter had 3900 employees. Yes, 3900! https://www.statista.com/stati...

What the hell do they need that many people for? Twitter at best could easily function with under 100 employees. 10 in sales, 1 engineer, 1 developer, and 88 managers. /sarc

Realistically, the company could downsize by 80% and streamline their system. They don't need that many people for "microblogging".

Re:Twitter is way too big (3900+ employees?)

[Pascoea]

Twitter at best could easily function with under 100 employees

Curious what your basis is for that analysis? Is it an in-depth knowledge of Twitter's infrastructure, research initiatives, and regulatory needs? Or is it an armchair analysis consisting of "twitter is basically text messaging on the Internet, so it can't be that complicated."

Reap what you sow

[Anonymous Coward]

If you bought shares in Twitter, you invested in a company that...

- Allowed people to be as abusive as they want provided they're not white
- Allowed ISIS to have a presence
- Allowed witch hunts to take place against users including doxxing and death threats
- Gave up info on people for following the wrong person
- Allowed people to create massive blocklists that slandered them as "harassers" that ran on the logic of "You followed the wrong person"
- Dishes out bans for no reason, and refuses to give up those reasons
- On that note, banning people for being republican.
- Has ignored European Freedom of Information requests
- Added a timeline that, let's be honest here, is used to hide users and tweets
- Censored multiple trending hashtags relating to leaks
- Banned users for repeating or retweeting offensive tweets, but not the original poster
- Didn't ban a guy posting CP until the hashtag demanding his ban was trending worldwide

Is it any surprise that in light of these repeated mismanagements and double-standards that Twitter's share price has been going like a bouncy-ball? I wouldn't want to be associated with them.

Re:They need more censorship

[bigman2003]

Obviously you are being funny/sarcastic...but this is exactly why I left Twitter.

I made the mistake of calling the Twitter attack on a man a 'witch hunt'. Some poor guy made the mistake of defending the land-a-spacecraft-on-a-comet-guy during the whole shirtgate incident. Hundreds of level-headed concerned citizens went after that guy, including doxxing him. I believe my comment was, "Hey...this is turning into a witch hunt. Posting his personal details is not cool."

Which evidently was the worst thing I could have said. The attacks on me were fairly relentless...because 'witch hunt' is an attack on women, blah blah blah.

Twitter is a cesspool of bullshit. Where the more far out into safe space you get, the more popular you are.

I for one would like to see Twitter burn down.

Re:They need more censorship

[Mashiki]

Think you mean Twitter doesn't want you as a customer unless you're willing to drink the kool-aid and engage in ideological groupthink.