Dive Brief:

• Twitter announced it will cut 8% of its global workforce -- the first significant layoff in the company’s history, the Wall Street Journal reports.
• The company says it is refocusing its priorities under its returning chief executive, Jack Dorsey.
• Twitter’s revenue rose 61% to $502.3 million in the second quarter, but it remains unprofitable.

Dive Insight:

A rumored Twitter layoff is now reality. The company said job cuts will mostly affect its product and engineering teams and are part of a larger effort by returning CEO Jack Dorsey to get the company back on track.

Dorsey said Twitter’s size has compromised its ability to be agile. The company’s workforce has grown 24% to 4,100 employees over the last year. About half of its employees are engineers.

“We feel strongly that engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce,” said Dorsey.

Twitter must also stimulate user growth. The company’s monthly user growth climbed just 2.6% in the second quarter of this year.