Twitter/ long on live

There’s a massive sell-off happening following Twitter’s quarterly results announcement yesterday. In my view, this is just another example of the market’s short-sightedness. With the coming Winter Olympics and more significantly the upcoming World Cup, I see 2014 being a breakout year for Twitter globally. Large-scale live sport & entertainment events are more culturally and commercially important than ever – and Twitter increasingly owns the massive real-time conversation around these events. In last Sunday’s Super Bowl Twitter ‘dominated the battle of the brands‘ with Facebook. Signals like the IMG purchase, the comeback of award shows, and the overall resilience of television are all further positive indicators.

With products like Amplify it looks like the company is finally learning how to monetize its unique position in the live event space. And I think many consumers are still more receptive to advertising content embedded in their news & entertainment feeds versus brands hijacking their friendly social chatter on facebook (you can sponsor my news-media, but I’d prefer my birthday unbranded).

During the 2010 World Cup in South Africa the tweets per second (TPS) record was broken multiple times and landed at 3,823. Today that record stands at 143,000. This year’s World Cup – the largest sporting event on earth – offers a massive opportunity for Twitter to grow its user base globally and drive engagement. Given its recent moves I believe the company is poised to capitalize on the potential. Only time will tell as play gets underway on June 12th in Sao Paulo. I’ll be watching… on multiple screens.