Social media giant Twitter may be on the verge of cutting approximately 300 jobs, or about 8 percent of its workforce, according to a report from Bloomberg Monday evening.
Layoffs could be announced as soon as this week, prior to the company’s third quarter earnings release Thursday morning. The timing of its earnings report — 4 a.m. Pacific Thursday — left some observers scratching their heads. Twitter says the timing of the call is to avoid conflicts with other big companies reporting earnings later in the day, as is custom with tech companies, like Google and Amazon.
To avoid conflicting w/ peer calls, we've rescheduled Q3’16 earnings release/call to pre-market on 10/27 https://t.co/njFKHWLDoe #TWTR $TWTR
— TwitterIR (@TwitterIR) October 24, 2016
Twitter stock has fallen approximately 40 percent in the last year, and it hasn’t been able to grow its user base as fast as competitors like Facebook and Instagram.
The company has reportedly explored a sale, but many of its potential suitors, like Salesforce, Disney, Google and Apple, among others, have publicly stated they aren’t interested.
In recent months Twitter has sought to add a new revenue stream through live streaming. Following its deal with the NFL to stream 10 Thursday Night Football games this season, the company inked deals with the NBA; the NHL and MLB; and the Pac-12 conference. It also live-streamed content from Wimbledon earlier this month. Twitter also is partnering with non-sports media companies, like Bloomberg, and streaming events like the Republican National Convention.
Twitter laid off a similar number of employees, 336, about a year ago, soon after Jack Dorsey was named the company’s permanent CEO.
The product and engineering teams felt the brunt of the 2015 layoffs, and it is unclear which departments will be most affected by the latest round of cuts, or if anyone in the company’s Seattle office will be impacted. Twitter opened the doors on its Seattle engineering center in 2012, part of a wave of Silicon Valley tech giants that have established offices in the Pacific Northwest in recent years.
