Twitter lays off at least 50 to offset plunge in revenue, The Information says

The latest round of job cuts targeted multiple engineering teams, according to a new report

Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco. Elon Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last October. AFP

Social media platform Twitter laid off at least 50 employees on Saturday in what is thought to be at least the eighth round of job cuts since Elon Musk took over the company in late October, business publication The Information reported.

The latest round of job cuts targeted multiple engineering teams, including those supporting advertising technology, the main Twitter app and technical infrastructure to keep systems up and running, the US technology-focused publication said in a report on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of jobs have been cut in the technology sector in recent months amid rising interest rates and growing fears of recession in the world's largest economy.

Companies such as Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Google's parent Alphabet have axed staff after boosting hiring at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Spotify, IBM, Disney, PayPal and Dell are other major companies to have cut jobs in recent weeks.

Twitter has shed about 80 per cent of its employees since Mr Musk took over last year, CNBC reported last month, citing internal records it had seen.

About 75 of the company’s 1,300 employees are on leave, including about 40 engineers, the report said.

However, Mr Musk tweeted that the CNBC report was incorrect and there are about 2,300 active, working employees at Twitter.

Mr Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last October after tumultuous months of back and forth during which he questioned the numbers of users on the social media platform but finally relented as a drawn-out litigation process neared.

He cut thousands of jobs after acquiring Twitter, saying that it was losing $4 million a day and advertisers were fleeing the microblogging platform.

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In November, Twitter laid off about 3,700 employees in a cost-cutting measure.

The latest job cuts aim to offset a plunge in revenue following Mr Musk’s takeover and further whittle down staff that had shrunk by at least 70 per cent to roughly 2,000, The Information reported.

In November, Mr Musk said that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation.

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” Mr Musk said in a tweet on November 4.

The San Francisco-based company recently auctioned many items as part of a cost-cutting exercise.

A bird logo statue from Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters sold for $100,000 in an auction held by Heritage Global Partners. The auction also featured furniture, decorations, kitchen equipment and electronics, with more than 600 items up for sale.

Another method to raise revenue that has been under consideration is to put popular usernames up for auction, the New York Times reported.

Mr Musk also launched the Twitter Blue subscription service, which allows subscribers to edit tweets, upload 1080p videos and get a blue tick account verification in exchange for a monthly fee.

Before Mr Musk acquired Twitter last year, the company’s employee headcount stood at about 7,500.