Twitter to layoff 8 percent of its global workforce, says CEO Jack Dorsey

Twitter has finally announced to cut eight percent of its global workforce – nearly 330 jobs – to strengthen the micro-blogging site that is facing slow user growth amid tough competition from the rival social media platforms. In a letter sent to employees on Tuesday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced several moves including layoffs to get the once fast-growing social media service back on track, Wall Street Journal reported. “We feel strongly that engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce,” Dorsey wrote. The job cuts would mostly affect its product and engineering teams in an effort to “organise around the company’s top product priorities and drive efficiencies”. Over the past year, the company’s workforce grew 24 percent to 4,100 employees, about half of whom are engineers. However, Twitter’s monthly user growth climbed just 2.6 percent to 316 million in the quarter ending June 30. In the same time, Facebook has more than doubled the strength of employees but nearly five times as many active users. Twitter also announced that it expects revenue and a measure of its adjusted earnings to come in above the high end of its previously forecast range for the third quarter. In his letter, Dorsey said the coming roadmap will entail “a plan to change how we work, and what we need to do that work”. IANS