Twitter is moving aggressively into streaming video with 12 just announced new content deals, including Bloomberg and the MLB. The deals will bring original video exclusively to Twitter in the form of live shows covering sports, fashion, news, and more.
For sports fans, Twitter will live stream WNBA games for the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons. MLBAM is a new behind the scenes shows joining Twitter’s MLB coverage, and PGA TOUR, STADIUM, and The Players’ Tribune #Verified round out the sports coverage.
The new Twitter news coverage includes Bloomberg Media, Circuit Breaker: The Verge’s Gadget Show, MorningFeed from BuzzFeed News, and Opening Bell from Cheddar. From the entertainment and fashion world, Twitter will offer Live Nation for music industry coverage, IMG Fashion, and general entertainment news from Propagate’s #WhatsHappening.
For Twitter, live video content is a compelling way to draw in new users. It also helps the company compete with other services trying to capture our eyes and attention such as YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Apple.
Twitter is pretty proud of its new content deals. Global VP of Client Solutions Matthew Derella said, “You’re not going to see anyone that can give you the audience mindset, the most premium content, and do both at massive and accelerating scale like Twitter can.”
Last year, Twitter landed a deal to live stream NFL Thursday Night Football games, but lost out to Amazon for this year to Amazon. This year Twitter will offer live pregame coverage and on demand highlights during some games.
The new live shows are starting this month and are available on the Twitter website as well as in the company’s apps.
Trump, Kanye, Kardashian, not sure if I’d brag about their audience’s “mindset”.
So here we are: all of the promise of something called the world wide web, technology that would be confused with magic just a couple of hundred years ago, and what do we do with it? Shop and watch tv. Maybe we deserve to be ejected from the planet Earth by our someday robot overlords. Sorry, I couldn’t think of a clever portmanteau. 😉