vinyarb

So, I can’t believe this is my first post of 2016. Yeah, it’s been that busy a year! But more on that for a later post (promise!).

Today, I want to talk about Twitter. Twitter’s stock, for those financially aware, have been more or less in free-fall since early 2015. A lot of critics of Twitter pointed to the fact that Twitter as a platform is not easy to onboard for newcomers. There’s a sense of “what do I do with this?” (which is exactly how I feel about Snapchat btw).

Adding to that problem, Twitter also has issues keeping new users, and turning them into regular users. They are not small by any means. 2016 Q1 figures had them at 310m monthly active users. Wall Street has not traditionally been kind to tech players, with the exception of the FANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google), everyone else has been battered.

But Twitter’s been gearing up with a new upcoming feature called Live. Essentially, through it’s platform, you’ll be able to watch NFL games being live-streamed, directly on Twitter. Other live events are being discussed and apparently close to getting to a deal.

Why Live will be essential to Twitter’s success?

A big use-case for Twitter is it’s ability to act as a second screen for people whilst watching their favourite show on tv. During the 2014 World Cup season, Germany’s 7-1 trashing of Brazil amassed 35.6million tweets! Just for that game!

People are already organically discussing about live events and tv shows on twitter. Twitter’s move to screen these events live on twitter would only make the platform more popular. Better yet, I believe Live is available even to people not signed in to Twitter. They too can follow the action both on screen and tweets as comments.

I believe Twitter will rise in value on the back of this and other event deals they’ll be announcing over time.

As a twitter user and a newbie stock observer, I’ll be watching this unfold closely over the next few quarters.