Shares surge 12% in extended trading

• Amazon’s revenue increased to $3.2 billion amid mass layoffs around the world
• The company announced the quarterly sales on Thursday leading to company shares rising 8 percent in extended trading
• About 9,000 employees were issued layoff notices on Wednesday

Amazon reported a $3.2 billion profit ahead of expectations, amid the company laying off thousands.

The world’s biggest online retailer reported on Thursday better-than-expected net sales of $127.36 billion in the first three months of the year and forecast sales between $127 billion and $133 billion in the second quarter.

Shares rose 12 percent in extended trading, also bolstered by a forecast for second-quarter results roughly in line with investors’ targets.

The announcement comes as the tech company notified 9,000 employees in human resources and cloud computing business units on Wednesday that they were out of a job. 

Addressing ongoing worries about the economy, CEO Andy Jassy has aimed to slash spending across Amazon’s vast array of businesses.

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Vice Media Cuts Staff and Ends Vice News Tonight

More 2023 Media Layoffs in Biden’s Economy

Vice Media said it was restructuring its global news operation, including shutting down its Vice News Tonight broadcast, as the embattled media company looks to sell itself. 

The company expects to cut more than 100 jobs as part of the broader reorganization, according to a person familiar with the matter. Vice has around 1,500 employees, another person said. 

“We are transforming VICE News to better withstand market realities and more closely align with how and where we see our audiences engaging with our content most,” co-CEOs Bruce Dixon and Hozefa Lokhandwala said in a note to staff that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. They said the company needed to accelerate its transition toward platforms such as Paramount Global’s Paramount+ with Showtime, free ad-supported streaming channels as well as YouTube and TikTok, among others.

Vice News Tonight is a weekly news show available on Vice TV, a cable network distributed by A+E Networks. Previously, it ran on HBO. 

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The demise of BuzzFeed News marks the end of an era for digital media

It is the end of an era.

BuzzFeed News, the digital news outlet that harnessed the power of social media to take the internet by storm, is shuttering. The move marks the end of the digital media upstart frenzy rooted in the late aughts that enlisted a new generation of young journalists and once threatened entrenched legacy news organizations.

The outlet once inspired tremendous jealousy from the likes of CNN and The New York Times. Flush with venture capital cash, it poached top journalists at establishment outlets, opened bureaus across the world, and touted its ability to send stories viral across the web.

Back then, BuzzFeed was the envy of media and its employees the cool kids of the industry. The outlet was sown into the fabric of the culture. Lists and quizzes saturated social media feeds and dominated the internet.

The digital news pioneer rode the early growth of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to soaring heights. While older competitors were wary about the new horizon opening up on the web, BuzzFeed leaned into it, tapping the platforms for their audiences’ attention and reaping the incredible rewards.

But that was a very different time. Like an oil field tapped dry, publishers can no longer exploit Facebook as a firehose for traffic and revenue. And Twitter, where BuzzFeed News made a name for itself among the journalism community, often ensuring the entire industry read a story by having its stable of reporters tweet an article simultaneously, is collapsing under Elon Musk.

Jonah Peretti, the BuzzFeed co-founder and chief executive, effectively said this in his memo to staffers on Thursday when he accepted blame for the shuttering of the news division. Peretti acknowledged he was “slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media.”

Ben Smith, the Semafor co-founder who was the founding editor of BuzzFeed and has a forthcoming book due out about the “billion-dollar race to go viral,” was more explicit: “I do think it makes really clear the relationship between news publishers and social media is pretty much over,” Smith told CNN Thursday.

Smith, who said he is “heartsick” by the shuttering of the news division that he spent years fostering, is spot on. As the dinosaurs of the social media era get their lunch eaten by newcomers such as TikTok, so are the outlets that previously wielded those same platforms as their superpowers.

In fact, you can trace the rise and fall of BuzzFeed News with the rise and fall of Facebook. The outlet, which exploded onto the scene about a decade ago, soared on the wings of the social platform before slowly waning. While it managed to win a Pulitzer Prize in 2021, it had become evident in recent years that BuzzFeed News was in decline from its glory days. Leadership slashed its acclaimed investigations team, shuttered entire verticals, and pared down the newsroom’s size and ambition for global domination.

The move to kill off its news division doesn’t necessarily spell great news for BuzzFeed at large either, which is perhaps why its stock tanked 20% on the announcement. BuzzFeed News gave BuzzFeed writ large prestige that the other content companies of the bygone era (ViralNova, Distractify, etc.) didn’t have. BuzzFeed used to boast that it didn’t just do silly quizzes, but also invested in serious hard-hitting journalism. What is it now?

Peretti has said he would like to now draw on the power of A.I. to help create content for BuzzFeed. Like his resolve to lean into the new frontier of social media in the late aughts, Peretti is once again betting his business on adapting faster than his competitors to the latest cutting-edge technology that will reshape the industry.

But BuzzFeed’s ability to thrive in this brave new era remains to be seen.

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2023 Media Layoffs: Vice Media Reportedly Cuts 100 Jobs

Vice Media is cutting more than 100 employees and canceling its Vice News Tonight program, sources told the Wall Street Journal—the latest in a brutal series of closures and layoffs rocking the media industry in 2023.

TIMELINE

April 27 Vice Media will lay off more than 100 of its roughly 1,500 employees and shut down its Vice World News brand, sources familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal, following years of financial challenges for the once-ascendant media company.

April 24 ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro announced in a memo the sports news network would begin cutting an unspecified number of employees, though the layoffs will primarily affect management positions, according to the Sports Business Journal, including communications vice president Mike Soltys and Russell Wolff, who oversaw the ESPN+ streaming platform.

April 20 Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti told Buzzfeed News staff the online publication would be shut down, according to a memo obtained by the New York Times, as the company shifts toward “concentrating our news efforts” on HuffPost, an outlet the company notes is “profitable.”

April 20 Insider Inc.—formerly known as Business Insider—announced it would begin cutting an estimated 10% of its staff in an effort to “keep our company healthy and competitive,” an Insider spokesperson told Forbes.

March 30 Disney’s broadcast news division announced it was laying 50 people at ABC News, following an earlier announcement by CEO Bob Iger indicating the company would continue an ongoing round of layoffs.

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A comprehensive list of 2023 tech layoffs

Last year’s techwide reckoning continues. In 2023, layoffs have yet again cost tens of thousands of tech workers their jobs; this time, the workforce reductions have been driven by the biggest names in tech like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and Zoom. Startups, too, have announced cuts across all sectors, from crypto to enterprise SaaS. 

The reasoning behind these workforce reductions follows a common script, citing the macroeconomic environment and a need to find discipline on a tumultuous path to profitability. Still, tracking the layoffs helps us to understand the impact on innovation, which companies are facing tough pressures and who is available to hire for the businesses lucky to be growing right now. It also, unfortunately, serves as a reminder of the human impact of layoffs and how risk profiles may be changing from here. 

Below you’ll find a comprehensive list of all the known layoffs in tech that have occurred in 2023, to be updated monthly. If you have a tip on a layoff, contact us here. If you prefer to remain anonymous, you can contact us here.

The running total of layoffs for 2023 based on full months to date is 168,243, according to Layoffs.fyi. Tech layoffs conducted to date this year currently exceed the total number of tech layoffs in 2022, according to the data in the tracker.

• January: 84,714 employees laid off — see all January 2023 Tech Layoffs
• February: 36,491 employees laid off — see all February 2023 Tech Layoffs
• March: 37,109 employees laid off — see all March 2023 Tech Layoffs

April 2023

Dropbox

Announced April 27 that it would be laying off 500 employees or 16% of staff.

Amazon

Announced on April 26 that it is shutting down its Halo Health division, effective July 31, among other divisions. The layoffs are part of the 9,000 employees announced in March. Including the 18,000-person layoffs announced in January, this brings the total to 27,000 job cuts or 8% of Amazon’s corporate workforce this year.

Rapid

Announced on April 25, Rapid, previously known as RapidAPI, lays off 50% of its staff. The layoffs are believed to have impacted 115 people.

Anthemis Group

Announced on April 25 that it will lay off 16 people from its staff, or 28% of employees.

Lyft

Announced on April 21 that employees will learn whether they have a job or not via an email that will be sent out April 27.

Lyft layoffs to affect 26% of workforce, or about 1,072 people as promised on April 27.

Meta

Announced April 18th that it is expected to lay off 10,000 jobs in the coming months. This is on top of the 11,000 jobs that were cut in November.

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