Twitter, the financially troubled social networking site, will be cutting its workforce by 8 percent before the company’s third quarterly financial report. Bloomberg released the confirmation Thursday 27 October.
As speculations on a possible takeover by Google have proved unrealistic for the company which has never made profits, over 300 Twitter employees are expected to lose their jobs this week.
In what looks like a coincidence, the same percentage of workers were recruited barely one year ago by the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey, reports confirm.
Twitter has experienced backwardness in the past years; making no profits, losing a large number of subscribers to competition, and missing a spot among top social networking sites.
Experts believe the company’s decision to downsize its workforce will help boost Twitter’s revenue which has constantly been on a downward slope in recent years.
Twitter has recorded 40 percent fall in its share within the last one month.
Recently, ahead of a possible acquisition, Twitter had also hired bankers but the plans suffered a sad demise after potential buyers Salesforce and Walt Disney lost interest in the company.
However, the presentation of the financial reports that is usually scheduled around 1 pm PT, has been rescheduled to 4 PM PT.
Twitter stated that the rescheduling took place so that the analysts could “avoid overlapping with several other earnings announcements in the Internet sector scheduled for Thursday afternoon.”
According to 247wallst.com, shares sold short in Twitter Inc. (TWTR) rose 7.5 million to 54.3 million in the period that ended October 14. That was 9% of the float, and it was posted a few days ahead of rumors that Twitter will lay off hundreds.
Twitter’s share price skyrocketed recently as many investors believed it would be taken over.
However, the expected good fortune turned a hoax after news broke out that the listed buyers had chickened out, bringing down Twitter’s shares to $25, and then dropping quickly back to just above $17, reports confirm.
Jonathan Cowperthwait, a Twitter user since 2008, said he’d be worried if Google bought Twitter because the online search giant “is the worst” at social services that aim to foster online interactions, beyond email. Its Google Plus service never took off; Orkut and Dodgeball closed.
Cowperthwait said that rather than let Twitter live independently, Google might “try to shoehorn it back into their own social product.”
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