Reddit to hand pink slips to 5% of its workforce, reduce fresh hiring

The move aims to help the social media company Reddit to break even next year

Social discussion platform Reddit is laying off at least 90 employees and reducing fresh hiring as part of restructuring plans to cut costs, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Wednesday.

The layoffs will impact 5 per cent of the company's 2,000-strong workforce.

In an internal email to employees, Reddit Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Steve Huffman said that they had a solid first half of the year, and "this restructuring will position us to carry that momentum into the second half and beyond".

Reddit is also reducing its hiring plans for the rest of the year to about 100 additional employees (it was expected to hire 300 people).

The move aims to help the social media company break even next year. Reddit was spun off from magazine conglomerate Conde Nast in 2011.

According to the company, more than 57 million daily active unique visitors engage with more than 100,000 active communities on the platform.

Users have so far contributed more than 13 billion posts and comments globally.

In May, Reddit rolled out new features to make it easier for Redditors and publishers to share content on and off the platform for both iOS and Android users.

Earlier, when a user came across a post, conversation, or meme on Reddit, the company did not make it easy to send it to others.

In addition, Reddit introduced a new toolbox that makes it easier to display Reddit content on their own platforms to make sharing easier for publishers.

(With agency inputs)