Storytelling platform Wattpad cuts nearly 15% jobs in another layoff round

San Francisco, Jan 31 (IANS) Canada-based storytelling platform Wattpad has slashed nearly 15 per cent of its workforce in another round of layoffs conducted earlier this month.

The company has laid off around 30 employees, TechCrunch reported, citing sources.

The move is part of the company’s restructuring plan to reduce costs, as its US-based parent company Webtoon Entertainment tries to improve its finances ahead of an initial public offering as early as 2025, the report mentioned.

Webtoon Entertainment has three storytelling subsidiaries — Wattpad in Toronto, Naver Webtoon in Seoul and Line Digital Frontier in Tokyo.

This is the company’s second round of job cuts. In March last year, Wattpad laid off 42 of its 267 workforce, or 15 per cent of the staff.

Meanwhile, enterprise software major Salesforce has become the latest tech company to make job cuts, according to a media report.

The company is laying off around 700 employees, said a person familiar with its plans, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Salesforce joins Chinese short-video making app TikTok, Google, YouTube Amazon, Unity, and Discord in the Big Tech layoffs in 2024.

Google has laid off nearly 1,000 employees in several departments, including Google’s hardware, central engineering teams, and Google Assistant.

In just two weeks into the New Year, at least 46 IT and tech companies (including startups) have laid off more than 7,500 employees and the number is growing by the day, as generative AI (GenAI) threatens millions of jobs.