Twitter gets election night coverage as Periscope adds studio quality

Dive Brief:

Twitter has partnered with BuzzFeed News for an election night special to be live streamed on the platform from BuzzFeed’s New York offices, according to a joint release.
The live stream will provide advertisers with an opportunity to reach audiences with TV-style mid-roll ads along with original content clips from BuzzFeed that marketers can sponsor and then promote on Twitter.
In separate news, Twitter property Periscope is opening up options for professional A/V equipment with Periscope Producer, per a company post on Medium. Live streaming video was previously limited to mobile device cameras.

Dive Insight:

Facebook Live introduced studio-quality streaming in March, so Twitter is playing a bit of catch up as it tries to rebrand as a “people’s news network,” to quote CEO/co-founder Jack Dorsey. But while Twitter may be lagging a little behind in terms of footage quality, it remains a major hub of discussion, as the last debate was the most-tweeted ever with more than 17 million tweets during the debate and nearly 30 million over the course of the day.

While Periscope is a separate entity from Twitter proper, the launch of Producer signals a "new way for brands, media organizations and other live video creators to broadcast high quality streams from devices beyond a phone or tablet," according to the company, and it's probable that the upgrades to Periscope will translate to its parent site given the renewed focus on being a video portal.

The site's team-up with BuzzFeed is just the latest in a growing string of deals to integrate live video content onto its platform, a move that is looking more and more like a make-or-break one since several acquisition possibilities from big brands like Google and Disney fell to the wayside after Dorsey set a tight bid deadline of Oct. 27.

In the past year, Twitter has locked in a variety of streaming partnerships with companies such as Bloomberg News (also for the presidential debates) and every major professional sports organization, with the crown jewel being an NFL package to broadcast 10 Thursday Night Football games this season — though some sponsors are reportedly finding Twitter's numbers "underwhelming" on that front, so it will be interesting to see whether big Twitter debate discussion translates to big Twitter viewers.