Twitter shrinks footprint in SF and Oakland

Twitter, the social media network that cut staff and froze hiring this month, has canceled its Oakland office plans and downsized its San Francisco headquarters.

The company has scrapped a lease signed less than a year ago at 1330 Broadway in Oakland, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Also it’s shutting down its 110th St. office, connected to its 1355 Market Street headquarters in San Francisco.

Twitter had sought to sublease 174,000 square feet across five floors there, roughly a fifth of its entire headquarters. The company is exiting an additional four floors for a total of nine.

Twitter allows employees to work from home, forever. Its 66,000-square-foot Downtown Oakland satellite office was among its first designed around a hybrid work model.

As recently as January, it had planned to expand its San Francisco headquarters by almost 80,000 square feet.

“We are evaluating our global office portfolio and re-sizing certain locations based on utilization,” a Twitter spokesperson said. “We’ve proven we can operate our business successfully with a distributed workforce over the years and remain committed to our employees, our customers and the markets we serve.”

Many tech firms have downsized by laying off employees or paring away offices as stock markets teeter and growth has slowed.

San Francisco companies such as Lyft, Unity and Substack have laid off workers, while Block, a neighbor of Mid-Market-based Twitter, said it wouldn’t renew its headquarters lease when it expires next year.

Twitter faces additional challenges, including a fizzled takeover deal by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

Twitter and Musk will likely square off in a Delaware court in October as the company seeks to force him to complete the acquisition. The social media giant reported a loss of $270 million in the second quarter as advertising spending fell.

Twitter also plans to downsize in Tokyo, Mumbai, New Delhi and Dublin. In addition, offices could potentially close in Seoul; Wellington, New Zealand; Osaka; Madrid; Hamburg; Sydney; and Utrecht, Netherlands.

A small Bay Area office in San Jose is staying open.

– Dana Bartholomew

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