We got a tip that there have been some staff changes at Marketwire, specifically, a number of layoffs that could indicate trouble at the news distribution company. Has Marketwire run into a rough patch?! No, they say.

“The company is doing well and performing well,” Marketwire’s VP of content and branding, Mike Torre, told us over the phone. “We did go through some restructuring recently, but not because of financial performance. We’re restructuring for better alignment of executive skills.”

Torre said that there had been layoffs in December, which is the end of the company’s fiscal year. But the staff is now “bigger than it was before” when you tack on the people it has hired. Torre, for example, has a social media background and joined Marketwire from a marketing agency.

“We’re bringing bench strength in spaces like that,” he says.

Torre also noted the 2010 Sysomos acquisition, which added social media monitoring and analysis capabilities.

“That acquisition allows us to step up to a new level and combine the traditional wire distribution business, which evolved in the last 10 years because of the Internet, [with] social media functionality,” he said. “That’s where product and innovation is going.”

Marketwire has a number of new technologies and products on tap for 2012, and Torre says it “looks like it’s going to be the biggest year for us yet.”

The company is working with a PR firm, Argyle Communications.