The short-messaging service secured the rights to stream 10 Thursday night games this year as it attempts to broaden its appeal. It’s hoping that live video of sports and other events will help stimulate more interest in its service.
It’s a crucial time for the faltering company that is trying to improve stagnating user growth, not to mention boost its appeal to advertisers.
The apps, which are free, will have all the live-streaming video available on Twitter. Besides the football games, this includes content from the NBA and Bloomberg News. It will also have other Twitter content, such as top tweets and Periscopes (video from Twitter’s live-streaming app).
Users won’t need a Twitter account or a pay-TV subscription to watch the content. But they will be exposed to advertising from Twitter — and ideally might be lured into signing up for an account.
It’s a crucial time for the faltering company trying to turn itself around and improve stagnating user growth, not to mention its appeal to advertisers. Twitter has never made a profit, and in the most recent quarter posted just a 20 percent revenue increase, compared with 59 percent growth at Facebook.
It averaged 313 million users a month in the period, a gain of just 3 million from the previous quarter. Facebook has 1.71 billion users.
© 2016 Associated Press
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