Twitter is really good at one thing: Gathering real time events generated by its millions of users. It is the platform’s greatest asset and it is rivaled only by the likes of Reddit.
Over time, it has tried to make the whole real time experience better by introducing products like Moments, which combines both tweets and vines to give a better view of the events being shared around the world. They also introduced hashflags which are custom hashtags for people to keep up with a certain event, like the Oscars or a football match.
It seems now Twitter has now gone a step further in this direction in covering real time events, as Bloomberg reports that the company has secured rights to stream NFL online on its platform.
Apparently Twitter outbid other huge competitors like the online retail giant Amazon, social media giant Facebook, telecommunications provider Verizon and the search giant Yahoo. However, the terms of the streaming rights were not revealed to the publisher but you can expect is in the tens of millions when you compare with what Yahoo paid ($17 million). This deal will allow Twitter to stream NFL games on Thursday night,
This deal signals a future where traditional media is testing its waters on social media networks to see if they can be able to take advantage of the new paradigm. If this venture becomes a success, other traditional media firms might decide to give Twitter the rights to stream live events like major sporting events, Oscars, Presidential debates and so on.
