Twitter may be busy ramping up live video by striking content deals with media companies, but politics is the topic that currently rules the roost on the platform.
Therefore, it’s fitting that the individual who has given Twitter a new lease of life is now at the center of its biggest ever live-stream. We’re referring to President Donald Trump — the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States live-streamed to Twitter courtesy of PBS NewsHour amassed a total of 6.824 million unique views, reports Variety. Overall, that figure is slightly more than BuzzFeed’s Election Night coverage, which attracted 6.8 million views.
According to the Twitter Government account, the broadcast peaked at 377,000 concurrent viewers at 12:15 p.m. ET as Trump took the oath of office — again higher than BuzzFeed’s 244,00 concurrent viewers — including both logged in users and nonusers.
Whereas the total views figure seems impressive at first, it’s important to note that unlike television (which counts average views on a per-minute basis), social platform’s tally a unique view as someone who has watched a broadcast for three seconds or more. This time around, Twitter did not release per-minute viewership numbers. Seeing as Trump’s inauguration coverage spanned six hours in total, it is difficult to say how engaged users were with the stream without an average view count. In comparison, Nielsen claims Trump’s inauguration was watched by 30.6 million total viewers across 12 networks.
Twitter also had its fair share of competition, with both YouTube and Facebook broadcasting the event in conjunction with their media partners.
One of the biggest aspects of the Twitter live video experience for active users of the service is the ability to tweet while watching the action. To this end, the event certainly created a spike in engagement, with Twitter revealing that 12 million tweets were sent relating to the inauguration, with a peak of 58,000 tweets per minute at 12:02 p.m. Comparatively, election day 2016 saw 75 million tweets shared over the span of 24 hours. The lead-up to the election outcome had also seen Twitter broadcast both the GOP and Democratic conventions, and all of the debates live in partnership with a number of media companies.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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