Topic: Live
Twitter targets tie-ups with pay-TV broadcasters in live video push – Telegraph (Apr 3, 2017)
This is an interesting next potential step in Twitter’s push into live video. So far it’s focused on licensing video to show to all visitors (or at least all visitors in a particular country), with one of the big selling points being that users don’t have to hunt through a channel guide, authenticate themselves through a pay TV service, or jump through other hoops. What Twitter is betting on now is that users might be willing to authenticate themselves through a pay TV provider in return for the smaller benefit of watching video and related tweets in a single window, something I’m not sure users will go for. Twitter has, at least, made that tweet curation experience better in recent months, which may increase the attractiveness somewhat, but I suspect a big attraction for the other live video Twitter has shown was that it was free and painless. As anyone who’s used other TVE solutions knows, those words generally don’t apply.
via Telegraph
Twitter will start putting ads in front of Periscope videos – The Verge (Mar 28, 2017)
Like Facebook, Twitter is pushing ads into more and more places, including videos on its platform, in an attempt to drive ad growth at a time when that rate of growth has been slowing. In Facebook’s case, the slowdown is due to saturating ad load, whereas for Twitter it’s a combination of anemic user growth and ineffective ad formats. Pre-roll ads for live video are likely to be a bit of a turnoff for users, but if the video is important (and long) enough then they may just put up with them anyway. But this is yet another sign that Twitter is willing to try lots of new things when it comes to finding new sources of revenue, on top of last week’s reports about testing a paid subscription service.
via The Verge
Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and YouTube are bidding to stream the NFL’s Thursday night games – Recode (Mar 24, 2017)
When Twitter won these rights last time around in their first year as a separate set from television rights, it turned out to be something very different from what many of us expected. Rather than a massive splurge on a very valuable set of rights, it turned out that the winner merely got the right to show the games along with advertising mostly already sold by broadcasters, meaning there was very little additional revenue opportunity, and as such Twitter got the rights for a paltry $10 million. These NFL games have actually been a good fit with Twitter’s overall live strategy, which has mostly been focused on winning audiences rather than lots of new revenue, but it seems others are interested in taking another crack this year. It would obviously fit well with Facebook’s recent push into professionally produced live video, but also with YouTube’s recent investment in e-sports rights and with Amazon’s foray into TV bundles and Twitch video streaming. It’s less of a good fit with Apple’s current focus in the TV space, so it’s not surprising that its name doesn’t appear here. I’ll be very interested to see if the NFL is pitching the same kind of package as last time or whether the winning bidder will have the right to sell more of its own ads this time around.
via Recode
Facebook’s livestreaming strategy looks a lot like Twitter’s livestreaming strategy – Recode (Mar 14, 2017)
In my Techpinions Insiders post last week, I wrote about Facebook and Twitter’s respective live video strategies, and argued that this is one area where Twitter might actually be executing on the better strategy, namely focusing on existing high quality live video rather than trying to force user-generated content. This piece today confirms the conclusion of my piece in which I said Facebook should probably be doing more of this kind of thing. However, I also said that it was still unclear how well Twitter was monetizing the video it was licensing, given that most of the ads had already been sold by the original owners. The other challenge, as this piece makes clear, is that the video owners willing to partner with Twitter in this way are mostly those either with small audiences they’re keen to grow, or whose distribution isn’t the primary way they monetize, which tends to mean it isn’t the best or most exciting live content available. Meanwhile, the most compelling live video – major sports – remains largely off limits to online-only broadcasters. That’s not to say Facebook couldn’t bid for NFL rights as Twitter did last year, but those Thursday night games are such a tiny slice of the overall sports schedule in the US that it’s hard to see how it could be a central plank of an overall live video strategy.
via Recode
In Rush to Live Video, Facebook Moved Fast and Broke Things – WSJ (Mar 6, 2017)
There’s some really good reporting here, and it reinforces my sense that Facebook’s live video push hasn’t panned out the way it would have wanted despite its massive investment. I continue to believe that mass market live video has very limited appeal, largely because most of us don’t spend most of our time in situations which are worthy of (or appropriate for) broadcasting to our hundreds of friends. Yes, there are occasions when user-generated live video is uniquely placed to offer something no other medium can, but those are rare and not the basis for a widely used mainstream product. It’s still intriguing to me to see Facebook push so hard for individuals to share and consume amateur video, while Twitter has balanced its Periscope investment with a focus on high quality professional live video, including sports – easily the most compelling form of live content around for most users. This is one area where Twitter’s strategy feels smarter than Facebook’s, and it’s therefore not that surprising that Facebook seems to be experimenting more with live sports video as well.
via WSJ
Twitter Adds Top Commentary Tab to Live Video Experience – Mashable (Mar 1, 2017)
It looks like Twitter debuted a new Top Commentary tab in its live video screen last night for President Trump’s address to Congress. This should have been there from the beginning – the uncurated selection of tweets that has been shown against most live video since it launched on Twitter has been an unusable mess, and this new tab is a huge improvement. For the first time, this actually demonstrates the value of a curated stream of top tweets for a real-time event, something most active users of Twitter likely already grasp, but new users tuning in for a live video event don’t. Showing them the value – and power – of watching a well selected stream of tweets in real time is critical to converting them to active users of the platform. But of course Twitter should be doing this kind of real-time curation constantly for major topics across the site, especially given that it appears the feature is algorithm-driven, which means it’s much more scalable than something curated by human beings.
via Mashable
YouTube Introduces Live Mobile Video for Top Creators – Mashable (Feb 7, 2017)
Live video is already a big deal at YouTube, but streaming live video from a mobile device has been surprisingly late in YouTube’s rollout of the feature. Now, it’s finally making it available to channel owners with over 10,000 subscribers, after testing it for months with a smaller group of creators. This feels like a smart way to start, even if it’s somewhat ironic that the video platform known for user generated content will close the feature off to regular users, at least for the time being. If the quality of the early live video on YouTube is good, it could do much better than on Facebook, where most of the live video I’ve seen has been pretty poor, and feels more like spam in my feed than a useful addition. YouTube seems to be sensibly prioritizing quality over quantity here. The monetization angle is interesting – mid-roll ads are always interruptive, and YouTube appears to be focusing on paid comments, a much more unique model and one which doesn’t detract from the video itself. I’m very curious to see how much that feature gets used, though Google will never tell us how much money it makes this way.
via Mashable
Periscope CEO Kayvon Beykpour is now running all of Twitter’s live video products- Recode (Feb 6, 2017)
Live video is a big focus for Twitter, arguably to the exclusion of almost any other major innovation in the core product, and so it makes sense that it has a leader who reports directly to Jack Dorsey. But Twitter has always had two approaches to live video: Periscope, the original play, is a standalone app focused on user-generated content, and then there are all Twitter’s live video partnerships with existing content owners like the NFL and Bloomberg. It makes sense to start bringing these products together under a single leadership to make sure they work together effectively, but I think it’s also quite possible that we start to see Periscope integrated more into the core app and lose some of its identity as a separate product. Hopefully this will also free up Keith Coleman, who runs product at Twitter, to focus on all the other things that need fixing.
via Recode
Facebook looks like it’s going to stop paying publishers to make live videos – Recode (Jan 17, 2017)
Facebook has made a huge push around live video, and still is on the consumer side, but it looks like it’s backing down from paying professional video content creators to produce more of it for the site. That can be read in one of two ways, and this article doesn’t make clear which it is: either Facebook has the product where it wants it and so can afford to take its foot off the gas, or the push hasn’t been working and it’s pivoting to other things. My suspicion is that it’s the latter – we’ll continue to see prompts for users to share live video, but Facebook is giving up on professional live video. I think that’s sensible if it’s the case – Twitter’s strategy of simply licensing existing linear live video feeds seems to make a lot more sense here, even if the revenue opportunities are limited. Professional live video on Facebook just doesn’t seem to be taking off.
via Facebook looks like it’s going to stop paying publishers to make live videos – Recode
Check out live 360 video on Twitter | Twitter Blogs (Dec 28, 2016)
360 video has been mostly the province of Facebook when it comes to social networks, but Twitter (and Periscope) is now getting in on the action too. It obviously lends itself well to VR consumption too, though the focus for now is consumption through traditional channels. At a time when the things I feel Twitter most needs to do remain undone, it nonetheless keeps releasing new features, especially ones focused on live and video. I’m not sure how much this will move the needle as far as monetization or user growth, however.
via Check out live 360 video on Twitter | Twitter Blogs
Twitter Embraces Its Role As A Media Company – BuzzFeed News (Dec 28, 2016)
Facebook has notoriously struggled with its identity, resisting until very recently the temptation to call itself a media company, and with good reason – media companies command far lower valuations than tech ones. But Twitter seems to be embracing its future as a media player, with a focus on news (or “live”) and video. This piece cites several new hires the company is planning to make as evidence of this shift in strategy and perhaps identity.
via Twitter Embraces Its Role As A Media Company – BuzzFeed News