Twitter Trimming Office Space in San Francisco, May Close Buildings in Germany, Spain, Japan

As millions of Americans are returning to in-person work, Twitter is trimming its commercial footprint in a dozen locations, including New York and San Francisco, and potentially closing offices entirely elsewhere. A memo to staffers, published by Bloomberg on Wednesday, indicated the social-media company is scaling back its office space in New York, San Francisco, Dublin, Tokyo and Mumbai, India.

Twitter is also considering closing offices in Hamburg, Germany; Madrid; and Utrecht, Netherlands in Europe; Osaka, Japan and Seoul, South Korea in Asia; and Wellington, New Zealand and Sydney down under.

"We are evaluating our global office portfolio and resizing certain locations based on utilization," a Twitter spokesperson told CNET in an emailed statement. "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."

In San Francisco, Twitter will move out of its offices on 10th Street, located directly behind its current headquarters on Market Street. Plans for a new Bay Area office in downtown Oakland have also been scratched.

First announced in 2021, the Oakland office would've been big enough to accommodate 330 workers and was viewed as a template for an emerging hybrid office model in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dalana Brand, Twitter's chief people and diversity officer, said in the reported memo that the office downsizing wouldn't be accompanied by any layoffs.

"I want to make it clear that this does not change our commitment to the work in each of these markets," Brand wrote. "If certain offices were to close, there would be no impact" to employment. The affected staffers would just transition to full-time work from home, she added.

Twitter has seen an uptick in usage -- roughly 237.8 million daily users in the quarter ending June 30. That's nearly 4% more than the previous quarter and 16% from a year ago. But in a July 22 earnings report, Twitter indicated that its stock price dropped 35 cents per share, worse than Wall Street's expected loss of 9 cents a share. 

Revenue was $1.18 billion, down 1% from 2021 and short of the $1.3 billion analysts had predicted. The company instituted a hiring freeze in May and laid off nearly 100 workers in July.

Twitter has blamed its economic woes on "advertising industry headwinds" amid record inflation, as well as "uncertainty" related to Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover bid.

Musk, who's been trying to back out of the deal, has previously said remote work was no longer acceptable for his employees at Tesla.

Twitter shareholders will vote on the deal in September.