Social media stalwart Twitter is putting its new Live service to work already, quietly trialing the owned-and-operated live streaming platform during Wimbledon last week and now announcing that it will livestream the Democratic and Republican National Conventions "wall to wall" thanks to a partnership with CBS.
Specifically, Twitter will stream CBSN's live coverage of the conventions, TechCrunch reports. The digital news service has a team of CBS reports at each of the conventions and streams 24/7. Terms of the streaming deal were not disclosed.
"By bringing the live discussion of the Republican and Democratic national conventions together with CBSN's live video stream of the proceedings, we believe we're giving people around the world the best way to experience democracy in action," said Twitter CFO Anthony Noto in a media statement.
Given the potential size of the audiences watching both parties' conventions and the red-hot issues surrounding this year's U.S. election, Twitter is very likely taking advantage of the opportunity to draw in a huge viewing audience to its new live-streaming platform, one that it can monetize down the road.
The events will take place weeks ahead of Twitter's planned livestreams of 10 regular-season NFL football games, so it's a good bet that viewers will get the opportunity to stream other marquee events on the social media service, too.
In fact, Twitter and Bloomberg joined forces Tuesday to announce that Twitter will livestream at least three of Bloomberg's TV programs, including Bloomberg West, What'd You Miss? and With All Due Respect, and will feature the network's coverage of the financial markets throughout the day. Pre-roll ads will reportedly be available ahead of the video streams to help Twitter monetize its content, according to a Fortune article.
Social media sites partnering with major broadcasters isn't a new trend – Twitter also partnered with CBS during the 2012 elections, enriching the broadcasts with live tweets, polls and Q&A sessions. But the rise of live streamed video is changing the game in this segment. In a similar vein, NBC Sports has partnered with Snapchat, giving it some content rights to stream video from its upcoming coverage of the Summer Olympics in Brazil.
For more:
- see this TechCrunch article
- see this Fortune article
- see this CBS News article
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