Twitter Scores A Field Goal

The most important thing about the Twitter/NFL deal announced yesterday is that it provides Twitter with a reprieve from the “Twitter Is Dying” meme.At least for the next few weeks.We like Twitter and we’re genuinely hoping that this will work, but it seems more like a shot of adrenaline than a long-term strategy.  Twitter may get some new users to sign up to watch NFL games, but will those users stick around and start using the platform? Probably not. There’s not a lot to keep them there beyond following the feeds of their favorite players, something they don’t necessarily need to sign up to do. (You can see public feeds in your browser without being a member or logging in.) Curiously, this was also part of Twitter’s pitch—that despite only having 300 million monthly average users, their reach was much larger thanks to a sizable audience of non-logged-in users who are interested in what’s going on at Twitter.There are other factors working against Twitter here though—reports indicate they’re making very little money from the deal—CBS and NBC already own the digital rights and thus most of the ad revenue. Twitter is just going to be rebroadcasting those network streams and selling some local ad inventory. (Verizon also owns mobile broadcast rights for the NFL, and we’re waiting to hear how that’s going to play out vis a vis Twitter as well.)But back to that rebroadcasting for a minute—as many other streamers of live sporting events have learned to their detriment, getting a live stream to work is more easily said than done. It’s a software issue, pure and simple, and has nothing to do with whether the internet can “handle” video. (Of course it can.) But if your backend software solution is not set up to handle spikes of over a million viewers at a time, you’re looking at Crash City. And if you’re Twitter, that’s just going to be more proof that your goose is cooked.Or your blue Twitter bird.Either way, it’s not a great message.What has been interesting about this whole process, however, is that the social networks, Facebook and Twitter, were intimately involved in the discussions around digital rights. It shows just how far they’ve come in a very short period of time, from being seen as support players, the forum for fans to leave short snarky comments, to full on leads, capable of hosting the full streaming broadcast. That’s huge and recognizes the impact these platforms have in people’s lives, Facebook in particular with its billion and a half users.The Interface QuestionOur colleague Jesse Redniss raises an interesting question about what Twitter’s mobile interface for the NFL games will look like, specifically how (or if) they plan to integrate tweeting into the the interface and whether they are going to go with a more Periscope-like screen or a more Twitter-like one. It’s in Twitter’s interest to have users interacting while they’re watching, but it’s also going to be hard enough to see the game on an iPhone screen if you’re giving some of the screen over to tweets.Something else to keep an eye on.