Twitter shuts down its Bengaluru development centre and lays off employees in the engineering service operations team. According to unnamed sources, 20 to 60 employees are expected to lose their jobs as an outcome of this decision. This layoff decision comes as a part of the company’s “normal business review.”
In an email statement sent to the media, the social networking service said, “As part of our normal business review, we have decided to stop the global engineering work at the Bengaluru development centre. We thank the impacted individuals for their valuable contributions and are doing as much as we can to provide them a respectful exit from our company. The company remains committed to India as a strategic market for users, partners and advertisers.”
“Engineering is a key part of our global company and we continue to focus our programs and efforts on improving the core product experience for our users worldwide. As part of our normal business review, we have decided to stop the global engineering work at the Bangalore development centre,” a spokesperson told Mashable India.
The company is said to have been working towards matching pace with its competitors in the social media space such as Facebook, and the likes. The San-Francisco based social media company has been posting disappointing sales numbers and mixed results over the past few quarters.
In January 2015, Twitter acquired ZipDial Mobile Solutions, a Bengaluru-based mobile marketing and analytics company that paved the way for setting up an engineering service operations team in the country. Although unconfirmed, the deal between the micro-blogging social network and marketing analytics firm was touted to be $30-$40 million, PTI reported.
Last year, the micro-blogging service had plans to double team size in its India operations to build localised products suitable for markets with pervasive Internet connectivity issues and increase its employee strength to 50 employees. However today, under the leadership of Jack Dorsey, the company is struggling with sluggish revenue growth and stagnant user base for several quarters.
See: Cisco to layoff about 14,000 employees
Further, Twitter announced on Monday that it had tied up with the Bombay Stock Exchange to provide live updates of stock process, stock prices and opening and closing figures of companies to millions of investors. This collaboration is seen to be the first-of-its-kind deal between the social media micro-blogging giant and the stock exchange.
This tie up would make financial information easily accessible to millions of investors through a digital format. In a move to help investors follow the market thoroughly, Twitter has further activated four new features such as hourly tweets, auto-responding tweets for Sensex 30 stock prices, auto-direct messages for the opening/closing figures and live display, Economic Times reports.
Hourly tweets of the Sensex figures will be sent by the Bombay Stock Exchange through its twitter handle @BSEIndia. It will also tweet the companies’ stock prices. The company’s efforts to localise to Indian sensitivities will continue. The company had earlier launched an e-governance partnership with the Uttar Pradesh police to use Twitter as a customer service channel.
However, the company plans to maintain its presence in India for sales and media operations. Sources told Times of India that Twitter is on a hiring spree for other positions and job listing for the current vacancies can be found. Twitter’s offices near New Delhi and Mumbai will remain unaffected by the job cuts.
Twitter has recently announced plans to not include links, GIFs, photos in the 140 character limit in an effort to boost appeal and usage of the social media website. However, analysts have said Twitter needs to find new ways to boost its appeal beyond a core of celebrities, politicians and journalists, as its user base has remained stagnant.
Also read: Recruiters and Hiring Managers Turn to Social Media Recruitment in India
Image credit: oneindia.com
