Twitter might start a new slew of layoffs that may affect up to 8 percent of its workforce, according to recent reports. Insiders familiar with the matter say that the social media company could ax as many as 300 jobs.
The platform might resort to sacking a large number of employees, as it continues to face financial difficulties. Despite sustained efforts and shareholder pressure, Twitter has been unable to expand its audience and business, and purported plans of selling the company seem to have bombed.
Bloomberg reports that the job cuts could be made public this week, maybe prior to the Q3 2016 earnings report that is expected to be unveiled before the Oct. 27 market opening.
The rumor did not affect Twitter's shares, which maintained their price in Monday post-trading hours. As a reminder, the company's stock is 40 percent lower on a year-over-year comparison.
Jack Dorsey, the helm of Twitter, is pressured to make some difficult choices, as he is both the head of the Twitterverse and CEO of Square, a mobile payment company. This has caused some to wonder if he is capable of leading both companies toward positive results.
Dorsey took the reins of Twitter in 2015, and one of his first executive actions was to strike down a number of jobs. Despite putting effort into optimizing the personnel scheme, he was unable to boost Twitter's reach beyond the approximately 300 million user mark.
Meanwhile, rival platforms such as Facebook have already jumped the threshold of 1 billion active users per day.
Twitter had been in talks with multiple companies for a merger, but various companies who initially showed interest in the deal walked away. Marc Benioff, CEO at Salesforce, said that his shareholders firmly rejected the prospect of a Twitter buyout, as the social media company was not "the right fit."
Additional rumors said that Alphabet, Google's parent company and Walt Disney considered purchasing Twitter, but quickly pulled out of the talks. Some said that Softbank is interested in an acquisition, but the hard evidence to support that claim it is rather thin.
Bloomberg speculates that because of poor figures, Twitter was unable to give its engineers stock options as payment, and cutting into its employee pool might help alleviate some of that pressure.
Twitter will be releasing its third quarter earnings report on Thursday before the market opens. This is a highly unorthodox move for tech companies based on the West Coast, so the layoff rumors might have something to do with the decision.
Stay tuned to find out more about the Twitterverse's destiny!
