Twitter has recently been looking for ways to become more relevant in a world that has many social media options. Twitter recently posted their first profitable quarter in the history of the company. They are trying to build on that momentum in a number of ways. One of their biggest announcements involves Twitter streaming local TV stations when there is a very important news story that a national audience will be interested in. Twitter wants people to have access to credible places to get their news so they are able to know what is going on in other parts of the world. Twitter also does not want people to question if the news they are seeing is real or not. This is why only major TV stations will be streamed.
There will be another feature that Twitter will be adding along with the video news feed. Users will also be presented with tweets that relate to the specific news story they are watching. The tweets will be chosen by an algorithm. However, there is one problem that has presented itself. The box that users can click on to view the streams is very easy to miss if you are accessing Twitter on a smartphone. This could prevent many people who would watch the streams from knowing they are even there. Twitter will need to make the streaming box more obvious to mobile users if the service is ever going to catch on.
The streaming of big news story is definitely a plus for Twitter as a whole. The timing of the announcement is also curious. Twitter is making a clear attempt to be a bigger source of news at the same time that Facebook is taking a step back from news coverage. This is obviously happening because of all the heat Facebook took from all of the ads that were purchased by Russians during the 2016 election. This could result in many people who relied on getting their news from Facebook making the switch to Twitter.
The quality of the stream provided by Twitter has been criticized by some users. However, it is unclear if the streaming problem was Twitter’s fault or the result of the users being on a slow network. Twitter has announced plans to improve the quality of their stream as much as possible. There has also been talk of the streaming service being used to cover presidential press conferences.
Dil Bole Oberoi
