Ofo responds to “smear campaign,” sends lawyers letters to media

Ofo has taken to its WeChat public account to counter rumors that it is struggling and laying off staff, our sister site is reporting (in Chinese). The company published a posting entitled “No company has ever failed because of rumors!” where it stated its findings of a media survey of slanderous articles and postings across the Chinese internet. The posting ends with ofo saying it had already sent lawyers’ letters to the media companies involved.

This follows ofo co-founder Yu Xin’s denial on June 4 that the hire bike company was laying off 50% of its staff in the wake of the departure of COO Zhang Yanqi.

In today’s WeChat posting, in the last 24 hours thousands of almost identical articles have appeared across WeChat and Weibo with a formulaic headline structure beginning with the question “Is ofo about to collapse?” then followed by a range of similar responses (see image below). Even KOLs appear to have jumped on the bandwagon according to ofo.

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