Twitter’s 24/7 live streaming strategy, first disclosed earlier last week, is starting to take shape. According to the Wall Street Journal, the micro-blogging platform will announce its partnership with Bloomberg later today. The global finance news platform is slated to produce and live stream exclusive content on Twitter for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
This partnership is an initial and important step towards building Twitter into a people’s news network. The details of this initiative would be shared at Bloomberg’s advertiser-focused event, in the presence of CEO Michael Bloomberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. This exclusive Twitter live broadcast channel is presently unnamed. The financial deeds of this transaction are also being kept under wraps.
Speaking on the partnership, Bloomberg Media’s chief executive Justin Smith said:
It is going to be focused on the most important news for an intelligent audience around the globe and it’s going to be broader in focus than our existing network.
This development comes on the heels of Twitter’s rather surprising quarterly earnings report, released earlier last week. The micro-blogging platform has managed to shatter Wall Street expectations, which was refreshing for both the company as well as investors alike. It witnessed the most growth in terms of new monthly active users being added to the platform this quarter, such as 9 million were added only this quarter. This is way higher than analysts expectations, which stood at a mere 2 million.
As for more details of Bloomberg’s news channel, Wall Street Journal suggests that it won’t simply rebroadcast the content already shown on its existing television channel. Instead, the news platform plans to build something easier to understand and interact for today’s millennial generation.
It will be an amalgamation of ‘live news reporting from the news outlet’s bureaus around the world’ and curated videos posted by Twitter’s verified users. Bloomberg will be in complete control of the content, which will be monetized through advertisements. It plans to release this 24-hours online news channel this fall.
Talking about its news-focused live streaming strategy, Anthony Noto, Twitter’s CFO and COO said:
We really think we can reach audiences that are not paying for TV and are watching television on the go and we think Bloomberg is the perfect partner for us to start with.
In the previous quarter, Twitter’s earning report has disclosed that it garnered more than 45 million viewers and 800+ hours of live streaming video in the process. This was significantly up from 600 hours of programming in the fourth quarter of previous year. The company’s video-focused approach towards the growth of their social platform has been assumed later than expected. It had already acquired Periscope way back, but its integration into Twitter started not until late last year.
This partnership will be significant for Twitter as it tries to regain control of its lost position in the social landscape. The company is losing capital and has reported a massive decline in revenue this quarter, the first time since going public. It has also lost out on the chance to stream even more NFL games, its first venture into live streaming to Amazon. The e-tailer bagged the rights by paying five times more than the micro-blogging platform.
This 24-hours programming service sounds like an impressive proposition but we’ll have to wait to check out the experience. We will also keep an eye out for how the service pans out for Twitter, which is banking on the fledgling live video space.
