Zoosk has confirmed it will be laying off over 40 of its staff — one-third of the company — as Tinder continues to dominate the mobile dating app market.
This follows a cut of 15 per cent of staff this time last year. But things didn’t always look so bleak for the dating site.
Hitting the market in 2007, by 2009 Zoosk boasted 40 million users, a customer base mostly built on the back of MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, and Bebo extensions.
But then Tinder happened.
In 2014 the founders of Zoosk said goodbye to the business, as it abandoned plans to become a publicly listed company.
Of the recent layoffs, Zoosk CEO Kelly Steckelberg told TechCrunch:
“In our continued mission to operate as a sustainable, profitable and innovative company, we’ve made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce our headcount. Regretfully, this move impacts many colleagues who have shared our vision and made valuable contributions to Zoosk.
This reduction will increase operating efficiencies and streamline responsibilities as we prepare to bring several innovative product announcements to market in 2016. Our optimism for these developments that we expect to positively impact our growth does not diminish the reality of today’s news felt by our staff. We are committed to treating the impacted colleagues with respect and support during this transition.”
What will happen from here seems inevitable, especially since investments of over $60 million have failed to keep the forward momentum going.