There's blood in the pixels again. Since the beginning of last year, media companies with large U.S. digital operations have been shedding employees and even shutting down entirely. In total, more than 1,000 job cuts have been announced over the last 12 months, and industry watchers fear more to come.

While all media companies struggle in their own way, it is clear that all face a similar set of industry-wide problems. Companies reliant on digital advertising dollars have seen rates for display ads plummet as wave after wave of new competitors saturate the internet with content. Only those with the largest audiences and most sophisticated revenue machines have prospered; others, like Mashable, the International Business Times, and Gigaom, have all laid off staff.

The biggest digital media startups — Vice, Vox Media, and BuzzFeed — are still adding staff, but are not immune: BuzzFeed missed its 2015 revenue target and has cut its 2016 forecast, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday; BuzzFeed chairman Ken Lerer later told Re/code that its 2016 targets are unchanged and the company is on track to reach them.

"There's nothing cratering in the industry. It's better than ever," Lerer told Re/code. "It's just different."

The International Business Times declined to comment; Mic did not respond to a request for comment.

For media companies chasing the biggest possible audiences, it's hard to resist the lure of a story blowing up on Facebook. When the social network's algorithms smile upon a particularly shareable post, it can put it in front of millions of people — sometimes tens of millions. That has led many ambitious media companies to pursue Facebook traffic relentlessly — a pursuit some believe will be fatal to all but the biggest players.

"The cracks are beginning to show, the dependence on platforms has meant they are losing their core identity," said Rafat Ali, the founder and editor-in-chief of Skift, a news site focused on the travel industry. "If you are just a brand in the feed, as opposed to a brand that users come to, that will catch up to you sometime."

Mashable, for example, started out as a narrowly focused publication targeting the social media business and then, engorged with venture capital, chased scale. Ali pointed to sites like Mic and Refinery29 that started out small and are trying to ride viral success to become something larger. "The reality is that scale for scale's sake will catch up with people."

Refinery29 itself seems on board with the end-of-scale argument, at least according to its founder, speaking at a media conference on Tuesday: