Twitter to slash 9% of its workforce and kill Vine as it tries to eke out a profit

Initiatives such as streaming live video of NFL games are helping boost ad sales at Twitter, but not quickly enough to justify what investors and analysts have complained is a bloated workforce out of sync with the company's prospects. Several other firms, including Salesforce.com Inc. and Walt Disney Co., have considered and then rejected the opportunity to acquire Twitter in recent weeks.

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Twitter said it would shut down its Vine video app "in the coming months." Twitter acquired the six-second looping video app months after its founding in 2012. It developed a loyal following, but demand sank as users slowly found more intriguing tools and financial incentives on other social media apps.

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"Twitter monetizes its user base at about half the rate of Facebook, and we are not sure it can close the gap entirely," Mark Mahaney of RBC Capital Markets told clients earlier this week, citing "waning" advertiser interest in the platform.