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.

Re:Que surprise

[MachineShedFred]

Why buy at a premium now, when their balance sheet is a total mess? Wait for the inevitable implosion and buy the assets for pennies on the dollar. Jettison the horrible management and integrate it into your existing offerings.

You buy healthy companies. Unhealthy ones get scavenged and parted out.

They need more censorship

[CajunArson]

Twitter is obviously failing because they have refused to make Twitter a safe space from fascist Nazis like:
1. Trump.
2. Anybody who doesn't support Hillary (with the exception of Bernie supporters who converted by the deadline set forth in form 402-33R6).
3. White racists... oh wait, I should have just said "all white people with the exception of those we approve of".
4. Non-atheists*
5. Homophobes (e.g. anyone not gay).
6. Cisgendered
7. Gay people aren't really gay because they don't think what we tell them to think (looking at you Milo & Thiel!)
8. Any racist sports figures that don't flip the bird or at least kneel during the National Anthem.

* MUSLIMS ARE AN EXCEPTION (assuming you are violent that is).

I think that after these impure hate-mongers have been burned off from Twitter that the safe space will flourish and all problems will be solved.

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.

If this is indicative of eminent failure

[rmdingler]

Nothing of value would be lost.

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:Reap what you sow

[T.E.D.]

Allowed people to be as abusive as they want provided they're not white

On that note, banning people for being republican

Got an example of either of these? I'm familiar with the rest of the points you cite, but not these.

I follow a lot of people of color on Twitter, and the amount of abuse (and I'm talking about stuff that would get them *arrested* if they did) they are subjected to is just mind-boggling.

And then there's the (non-white) guy I follow who got banned twice because he happens to have the same (very common) last name as the head of ISIS. The only thing that stopped that was when they gave him a check-mark. So I certainly haven't seen any reluctance whatsoever to ban non-whites. If anything, there seems to be a bit of an itchy trigger-finger (just like in real life).

However I don't follow a lot of the kinds of people who, erm..., tend to anger people of color. So I'm thinking you may have seen some stuff I haven't. Care to share specifics?

Re:What is this Twitter thing?

[MBGMorden]

No less than most other entertainment - and more than a lot given how its used to spread news.

I mean really - just about everything except farming, housing, and medicine could be considered "superfluous" industries depending on how persnickety you feel like being.

Re:What is this Twitter thing?

[zifn4b]

I mean really - just about everything except farming, housing, and medicine could be considered "superfluous" industries depending on how persnickety you feel like being.

Fight Club covered this topic pretty well "What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra" Most products and services are solving "first world problems".

Re:Ermm....

[MachineShedFred]

You can beat expectations all day long if the expectations are sufficiently low. Beating expectations doesn't mean shit if you are still expected to lose a shitload of money, and you can't convince anyone else to give you more money. It just means you lost a little less than the "analysts" thought you would... but you still lost money. If you are losing money, and nobody is looking to loan you any more because you've been a giant money pit your entire existence with large earth-mover sized equipment dumping stacks of cash into it never to be seen again... well, pretty soon you start "downsizing" in order to just meet payroll and keep the lights on. ... much like what TFA is about.

They're also killing Vine

[Bueller_007]

http://www.bbc.com/news/techno...