Is Twitter Becoming the Next Big Cable Company?

April 8, 2016

Twitter is getting ready to broadcast much more than 140 characters at a time. According to an April 6 article in the Washington Post, Twitter and the National Football League recently entered an agreement that grants exclusive rights to Twitter to stream ten NFL Thursday Night Football games during the 2016 season.

The NFL said this about the deal in an April 5 press release: “the NFL and Twitter will provide free, live streaming video of Thursday Night Football without authentication to the over 800 Million registered and non-registered users worldwide on the Twitter platform on mobile phones, tablets, PCs and connected TVs.”

What does this have to do with information technology?

Information technology has been the enabler of the tremendous growth and availability of communications and entertainment on the go. From the beginnings of first generation cellular telephone communications in the mid-1980s (remember 1G?) to the modern – and continually evolving – 4G and 5G mobile communications, capabilities of mobile devices has steadily and rapidly increased. The cost of manufacture of devices has dramatically decreased, making mobile devices available to nearly everyone while the pace of innovation has quickened. The combination of the two has fundamentally changed how modern society communicates and consumes information.

In the not too distant future, the term “smartphone” may disappear from our lexicon since all mobile communication devices will be “smart.” Look for other conventions to fall, too, like Twitter being only about 140 characters.