It has been a turbulent year for Twitter Inc., with rumors that it could be bought out at any moment, more rumors that it would not be bought out and finally rumors that it would be laying off over 300 employees.

Now, it turns out that one of those rumors is actually true, as Twitter confirmed today in a statement that it would be laying off 9 percent of its workforce, representing roughly 350 jobs.

The layoffs appear to be focused primarily on certain teams within the company, particularly its sales and marketing staff. In a plain-vanilla statement, Twitter cofounder and Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said that the layoffs are part of the company’s strategy for future growth.

“Our strategy is directly driving growth in audience and engagement, with an acceleration in year-over-year growth for daily active usage, Tweet impressions, and time spent for the second consecutive quarter,” said Dorsey. “We see a significant opportunity to increase growth as we continue to improve the core service. We have a clear plan, and we’re making the necessary changes to ensure Twitter is positioned for long-term growth. The key drivers of future revenue growth are trending positive, and we remain confident in Twitter’s future.”

Twitter also said it’s shutting down its Vine mobile app that allowed people to post short videos. The website will continue for already-posted videos, and users will be able to view and download videos from the app for now, but the company clearly wasn’t able to make the once-hot app maintain its momentum.

It may have been nearly impossible for Twitter to maintain the meteoric growth trajectory it enjoyed in its early years, but the excitement surrounding the microblog platform has cooled faster than the company, and by extension its investors, would like.

In its third-quarter results, which were released at 4 a.m. Pacific apparently to avoid conflicting with afternoon earnings reports from Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., Twitter said revenues grew by only 8 percent from a year ago, the company’s lowest gain yet and its ninth consecutive period of slowed growth.

Twitter’s shares were rising about 1.6 percent in morning trading today. “The current quarter results were ahead of expectations and user figures provided some promising elements as well,” Pivotal Research Inc. analyst Brian Wieser said in a note to clients today. Those elements include large international advertisers representing the company’s fastest-growing segment and video ad units becoming the largest revenue-generating product.

Still relevant but not growing

Of course, while Twitter may not enjoy the massive user base or multi-billion dollar quarterly revenue of a behemoth like Facebook, the platform still has a respectable position in the social media landscape, and Debra Aho Williamson, social media analyst for eMarketer, says that Twitter has recently made a number of valuable improvements to its platform that could help it bounce back. Williamson notes that video in particular has been greatly improved on Twitter.

“Twitter is making good on its promise to generate more revenue from video advertising,” Williamson said in an email to SiliconANGLE.  “Twitter has always been a place where consumers go to talk about what they’re watching on TV, and gaining a share of lucrative video ad budgets is an obvious next step for the company.”

Williamson also noted that Twitter’s live video has made significant progress, including valuable partnerships with organizations such as the NFL, but she also says that so far its viewership has been “good, but not overwhelming.” Williamson believes that Twitter is still the best social media platform for talking about current events as they happen, but eMarketer does not expect the platform to achieve the growth it wants anytime soon.

“At this point, we don’t see many signs of significant growth in usage,” Williamson said. “Live streaming could bring in new users, but Twitter’s other efforts to attract new users aren’t yet showing much success.”

Indeed, other analysts remained bearish. “TWTR remains a difficult story,” said Macquarie Securities analyst Ben Schachter. “It needs to improve the fundamental usage metrics, refine its strategic focus, and significantly improve rev growth. Its high-profile and potential M&A are not helping. We have never recommended the stock and we still don’t.”

Photo credit: Esten Hurtle (@esten) for Twitter