Twitter released its third quarter earnings on Thursday, announcing the elimination of 9% of its staff as the company faces an uncertain future following failure to be acquired by potential buyers.
The decision to cut 9% of Twitter’s workforce, approximately 350 employees, was announced via a letter to shareholders on Thursday morning. The layoffs are being attributed to a “restructuring” of Twitter’s overall operations that will mainly affect sales, marketing, and partnership teams. Twitter did slightly exceed their expected earnings for the quarter, earning $616 million compared to the revenue of $569 million from the third quarter of last year.
“We see a significant opportunity to increase growth as we continue to improve the core service,” said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. “We have a clear plan, and we’re making the necessary changes to ensure Twitter is positioned for long-term growth.”
The company’s overall net loss has declined from $131.7 million to $102.9 million, however the future of the company is still questionable as Disney, Salesforce, and Google all decided not to acquire the company earlier this year.
Part of the company’s increase in profits is related to the 6% increase in advertising revenue, where Twitter continues to make the majority of their profit.
The company also discussed the recent censorship and free speech issues that have affected the platform, most notably the banning of controversial figures such as Breitbart Senior Editor Milo Yiannopoulos. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey planned to work on these issues – but not until after the presidential election it seems.
“For the past few months our team has been working hard to build the most important safety features and updating our safety policies to give people more control over their Twitter experience. Next month, we will be sharing meaningful updates to our safety policy, our product, and enforcement strategy.”
Twitter’s user growth – a point of contention between Twitter investors and its board that has led to a lawsuit – has remained relatively stagnant with an increase of 3% with 317 million active monthly users compared to the 1.2% increase seen in last years third quarter.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart Tech covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lucas@yiannopoulos.net
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