The spate of layoffs when it comes to social media companies is continuing into the new year. ByteDance, the holding company for TikTok, the popular social media platform has laid off hundreds of employees across multiple departments in China, the South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday.
According to the report, these layoffs were implemented at Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese version, as well as its gaming and real estate operations.
These layoffs were a part of the company’s move to “get fit and beef up the muscle,” a phrase that has repeatedly been used by ByteDance’s CEO, Liang Rubo.
Other social media giants including Meta (META), Pinterest (PINS), and Snap (SNAP) have also been laying off employees amid a tough macroeconomic environment that has forced these companies to cut costs.
In November last year, META fired around 11,000 employees, slashing its workforce by 13% and implementing a hiring freeze through the first quarter of this year.
Pinterest had also laid off some of the employees from its recruiting team and had talked about a hiring freeze last year. The company had stated at that time, “We’re closely monitoring the global macroeconomic environment and have decided to slow down our hiring for the remainder of 2022.”
Snap implemented mass layoffs and had indicated back in August last year that it intended to reduce its workforce by 20%.
The tough macro headwinds and the widespread social media stock sell-off has resulted in the Global X Social Media ETF (SOCL) tanking by 40.8% in the past year.
