However, for Fire TV users, the app is available only in the U.S and the U.K. The Twitter App for Xbox One will be available only in Mexico, Australia, Brazil, Canada, the U.S, and the U.K. The live streaming of games gives it a new avenue to influence users as it attempts to compete with rivals like Facebook.
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The move puts Twitter on a large number of TVs via the different streaming services and hardware right at a time when it’s making a major bet on live streaming video.
Available on Twitter’s platform worldwide, Thursday’s match was the first of 10 games the microblogging site plans to stream as it seeks to make itself a force in mobile video with live events.
The deal with Twitter also is an acknowledgement that fans increasingly are using multiple screens to consume the NFL.
More than two million people watched Thursday night’s football game between the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets for free on Twitter. Verizon Communications (VZ), Yahoo (YHOO), and Amazon.com (AMZN) alsosought rights to live stream the games, reports said.
To gear up for the big show, the company just launched a new version of its app for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Xbox One. The next four games will use CBS’ coverage, while the last five will feature NBC’s Thursday Night Football broadcast team.
In case you’re wary of being able to find the actual live stream, we’ve set up this handy guide to help you out.
A couple of things: Twitter’s broadcast was a good 30 seconds behind CBS’s, which means that if you did want to check your Twitter feed, you would have been both late to the party and likely exposed to game action you had not yet seen.
Last year’s live National Football League stream on Yahoo drew 15.2 million viewers overall, and an average of 2.3 million people streaming at any given time. That was up 20 percent for the TV audience compared to last season’s average for Thursday nights.
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The NFL and Twitter are already partners via the Twitter Amplify programme. But the extra attention gained from them could be worth it in the long run, and could actually transform the company into a streaming/social media hybrid play over time.
