Yikes — Twitter Is Laying Off 9% Of Its Employees

Rumors about Twitter laying off 8% of its staff are slightly worse than expected. Today, TechCrunch reports that despite a positive earnings report, the company is laying off about 9% of its employees across its marketing, sales, and partnerships departments. Twitter continues to be a pillar for politicians, celebrities, and anyone else with an opinion to broadcast their voice to the masses. But despite massive adoption and a core group of loyal users, its user base hasn't really expanded in recent months (or years), and it's continued to struggle to monetize its 140-character social media platform. Between the layoffs and shuttering operations of looping video platform Vine, CEO Jack Dorsey is likely trying to limit the money Twitter is bleeding each month — and perhaps make it more enticing as an acquisition opportunity for a company such as Google or Apple. As Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram continue to grow, it looks like even hilarious election tweets can't save Twitter. This article was originally published on October 25, 2016.

Dealing with trolls isn't the only thing Twitter has to worry about these days. The social media app's having some rough times financially. And ahead of its third-quarter earnings report Thursday, the company is expected to lay off up to 8% of its employees. That works out to around 300 people who can expect pink slips, Bloomberg reports. The layoff is an effort to combat how much money Twitter is losing, and perhaps, to make it more attractive to other larger companies that could buy it out. Earlier this month, numerous reports suggested that Salesforce was in talks purchase Twitter, but those plans fell through. The company's stock price has dropped 40% over the past year. (It's currently around $17.52, as of Tuesday morning.) And back when Jack Dorsey took over as CEO of Twitter this time last year, the company underwent a similar round of layoffs. We'll find out later this week how dire Twitter's situation actually is. If hundreds of people inside Twitter really do lose their jobs, we can all but count on some epic tweet storms about the news.