Media reports indicate that Twitter, Inc. TWTR is planning company-wide job cuts and the announcement could come this week.
Sources are saying that Twitter’s engineering staff, which makes up nearly half of the company’s 4,100 strong workforce, will take be the worst hit.
The development comes on the heels of the election of co-founder Jack Dorsey as Twitter’s CEO for the second time. Dorsey was serving as the interim CEO after Dick Costolo stepped down on Jul 1.
As the interim CEO, Dorsey was very vocal about the future of Twitter. He criticized some of the product changes and admitted that Twitter needed to go mainstream. He has been trying to bring big and sustainable changes to the product, which in turn will appeal to the masses and expand its user base.
As a part of the strategy, Twitter launched “Moments” last week. Moments is a simplified way to find the best or most relevant content on Twitter. As users pick the handles that they follow, they may be presented with only a certain perspective, as digging through hashtags and trending topics is often difficult. With Moments, a team from Twitter does that work for you.
While Moments is certainly an attempt to make the Twitter experience better for current users, it’s also an effort to rope in new users who find the site too confusing or unnecessary. Moreover, Twitter is supposedly mulling the idea of increasing its signature 140 character limit, thus enabling people to post longer tweets.
Currently, Twitter has a user base of 316 million, not anywhere close to Facebook, Inc’s. FB over 1.5 billion user base. Even Facebook-owned Instagram, a photo sharing app, has surpassed the 400 million-user mark.
Users aren’t the only ones who need to find value in Twitter, as investors are desperately searching for some value in the stock. Twitter’s stock has lost 20% so far this year and also suffered the ignominy of trading below its IPO price on some trading days this year.
Twitter at present is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock. Better ranked stocks in the tech sector worth consideration include OPOWER, Inc. OPWR and Speed Commerce, Inc. SPDC. Both sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
Be the first to comment