Twitter brings its TV app with live video to Roku

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Twitter brings its TV app with live video to Roku

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On the heels of Twitter’s plans to significantly expand the amount of live streaming video content on its network, the company today is bringing its big-screen video app to a new platform with its launch on Roku devices. The arrival comes over half a year after the TV app was first introduced on Apple TV, Fire TV and Xbox One, and will offer a similar experience that combines live video alongside top tweets.

The Roku launch is a significant expansion for Twitter’s TV app, as Roku today has 14 million active user accounts across both its streaming players and TV sets, as of of the end of March.

Roku says the new app will offer the same live streaming video that’s live on Twitter, including its original programming and live simulcasts in sports, entertainment, news and politics. And like the version already available on other platforms, Roku users will be able to see tweets from Twitter’s network alongside the video they’re watching.

Twitter recently announced a number of new deals for video content, including one with Bloomberg which will begin streaming 24/7 news broadcasts on Twitter starting this fall. These will include a mix of live news reporting and video that’s posted on Twitter by users, which Bloomberg will curate and verify to augment its own content.

The company also detailed a number of other deals at its first-ever NewFront presentation in New York this week, including new and expanded sports deals with the WNBA, MLB, NFL, PGA Tour, Player’s Tribune, and Stadium Network, as well as news and entertainment deals with Verge, BuzzFeed, Cheddar, Viacom, Dick Clark Productions, Propagate, IMG Fashion, and Live Nation.

Combined, the deals get Twitter to its earlier stated goal of being able to offer users 24/7 live video content, and help to cement Twitter’s place as a company that’s not just a social network, but one that’s also news and information channel of its own.

“The Twitter channel on the Roku platform brings together the video and related conversation that surrounds live events to the largest screen in the house,” said Ryan Troy, product manager at Twitter, in a statement about the launch. “Our new channel gives Roku’s audience an easy way to watch live events and see what people are talking about, keeping them connected to what’s happening.”

The new Roku app will be available as a free download starting today in the Roku Channel Store and won’t require users to have a Twitter account in order to use it.

 

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May 4, 2017 at 05:31AM