U.S. – Twitter Inc. (NASDAQ: TW) announced plans to lay off a few hundred employees, mostly in marketing departments, and shut down Vine video app as the company is struggling for the first time to produce profits next year.
Cutting down 9 percent of its workforce will get the social network closer to profitability, while Vine video service should see its last day “in the coming months,” just three years after its launch.
Vine already thanked all of the viewers and creators for the laughs and loops on its official blog. The developers assure they will work closely with authors to keep their original content and answer any questions.
One of Vine creators – Rus Yusupov – weighed in on his Twitter account. “Don’t sell your company,” he said, but Vine is dying to keep the parent company floating.
Saying goodbye to Vine, “The Instagram for video”
A trio of American entrepreneurs founded Vine in June 2012. Twitter acquired the startup in October 2012 for around $30 million and launched the service on January 24, 2013.
Its offer was very odd at the moment, but the 6 seconds video loops quickly found footing among millions of creative users in the United States.
Many internet personalities owe their fame to Twitter’s video service. King Bach, Nash Grier or Lele Pons rose as some of the biggest names in Vine, each one with over 11 million followers.
They moved their accounts and video stories and fans over to Instagram, as of most of Vine’s popular users.
Instagram is somehow of a copycat social media. Initially, users could not post videos on its feed, until the social media added 15-seconds video sharing feature on June 2013. A lot of people say Instagram changed its policy because of Vine’s success.
Twitter is losing to the biggest monopoly
Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey has focused on improving the network’s interface to encourage more activity. Some of the changes have included automatically surfacing the most interesting post users might have missed between visits.
Although users have welcomed the changes, Twitter is falling behind to rivaling Facebook and Instagram.
Out of 700 million active Twitter accounts, there are about 284 million active each month, a number that goes smaller by the day. Facebook boasts 330 million active users per month, and Instagram reports over 300 million monthly users.
Initiatives such as streaming NFL games has boost ad sales on Twitter, but not enough to ease investor concerns. Analysts have complained the company is a bloated workforce without a clear or unified purpose.
Salesforce Inc. and Walt Disney Co., have rejected the opportunity to buy Twitter in the recent weeks.
Source: Vine