Twitter Ending Vine, Laying Off Hundreds
Faced with increasing financial difficulties, Twitter on Thursday announced that the company is laying off approximately 9 percent of its workforce. At the same time, it’s making plans to end its video social service, Vine.
According to CBS News, Twitter has been unable to find a buyer as it continues to lose money. As a result, approximately 350 employees will be left go. Twitter has about 3,860 workers.
In a letter to shareholders, Twitter notes:
The restructuring, which focuses primarily on reorganizing our sales, partnerships and marketing efforts, is intended to create greater efficiency as we move toward our goal of driving toward GAAP profitability in 2017.
About Vine
On Medium, the Vine team announced that it would be discontinuing the Vine app.
Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today. We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way. You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. You will be notified before we make any changes to the app or website.
First introduced in 2013, Vine was expected to do for videos what Instagram had done for photos. Unfortunately, what actually happened is that Instagram added videos to its popular service, giving users little reason to make a switch.
Vine has yet to announce when the app will end.
The apps:
