Twitter kills its US$30 million Vine, slashes jobs globally

Twitter is shutting down its four year old Vine which it was rumored to be bought for US$30 million in 2012.This announcement came ahead of its its third quarter results, where it announced the restructuring and headcount reduction of 9% of global workforce. The company in its official press release stated that the restructuring focuses primarily on reorganising the company’s sales, partnerships, and marketing efforts. It, is intended to create greater focus and efficiency to enable Twitter’s goal of driving toward GAAP profitability in 2017.Marketing has reached out to Twitter to find out how its APAC team will be impacted.Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, said, “Our strategy is directly driving growth in audience and engagement, with an acceleration in yearover-year growth for daily active usage, Tweet impressions, and time spent for the second consecutive quarter.”He stated that the company sees a a significant opportunity to increase growth as we continue to improve the core service. "We have a clear plan, and we’re making the necessary changes to ensure Twitter is positioned for long-term growth. The key drivers of future revenue growth are trending positive, and we remain confident in Twitter’s future," he added.On the Vine front, it added that users will be notified before any changes to the app or website are made."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," said Twitter in a statement.This announcement came ahead of its its third quarter results, where it announced the restructuring and headcount reduction of 9% of global workforce.An expected move, said industry players.Ryan Lim, founder of QED Consulting, said: “Twitter has lost over a US$100 million. While Twitter’s revenue growth dropped from 20% to 8%, its monthly active users also saw a decline from 3% to 1%. This displayed stagnation.”He added that in order to make up for this huge loss, Twitter decided to cut cost and hence is cutting off non-profitable ventures, and Vine may have been one of them."However, he said that this is a short-term measure and the main focus in such situations should not be on cost cutting, but on monetising. This is a long term measure is needed help the company grow further, he said adding:Innovation is definitely the way forward. However, it comes at a price. Companies need to invest to innovate and extract value from to ensure profitability.On the topic of innovation, on the grounds of anonymity, one senior social media lead from the hotel industry seconded Lim saying innovation is the key and definitely the way forward."When a company like Twitter, stops innovating and starts playing catch up, it adversely affects user engagement which reflects on its revenue,” she added.