Twitter is working on a series of video products and services, including a new live video offering, according to people familiar with the matter and advertising industry sources. This represents Elon Musk's latest effort to save the flailing social media platform with help from incoming CEO Linda Yaccarino.
One of Musk's current points of interest is Periscope, a live-streaming feature from a startup that Twitter acquired in 2015 and killed in early 2021 because it was expensive to run.
The goal is to have reliable, high resolution live video capabilities on Twitter, similar to what is offered on YouTube Live and Instagram Live, the people familiar said. There is no hard deadline for the product, but there is a push to get it up and running as soon as possible, according to the sources, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. Musk and representatives of Twitter did not respond to requests for comment.
Former NBCU ad sales chief Yaccarino tweeted about Periscope a few days before Musk announced her as Twitter's new CEO: "Hey @elonmusk here's an idea for our new partnership: Periscope for #Paris2024. Let's just go hi-res first…😉 🇺🇸🇫🇷🥇," she wrote, referring to the Olympic Games in France next year.
Twitter employees are now racing to improve Periscope's code base, as its video component has not been significantly updated since its 2015 acquisition, the sources said.
Musk has had his eye on YouTube's business
YouTube and Instagram let users be live for several hours at a time. Musk has had his eye on YouTube's business almost from the start of his ownership of Twitter last fall, asking publicly for explanations of how it pays creators and ordering employees to recruit some for Twitter.
Musk, who told advertisers in November that he would head up Twitter's video product, became interested in Periscope toward the end of April, sources said. He "went live" on Twitter in early May through a low-quality live video stream while testing Periscope — "an accident," one of the people familiar said.
There is also talk at Twitter that the urgency to develop a live video product is related to right-wing TV host Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox News on April 24 and announced on May 9 that he would be bringing his show to Twitter.
There's another source of urgency around this initiative. Twitter's ad revenue has plunged since last year, with many advertisers leaving the platform. Video ads, when done well online, can generate sizeable revenue, which could replace some of the sales Twitter has lost. Yaccarino, who reportedly starts as CEO this week, has experience selling video ads, however she has a mountain to climb to lure marketers back.
Other Twitter video initiatives
Periscope is not Musk's only attempt to revive Twitter's video capabilities. Work is also being done to improve the functionality and performance of pre-recorded videos uploaded to Twitter for people who subscribe to Twitter Blue, the people familiar said. Subscribers can now upload videos up to 2 hours in length, while non-subscribers are still limited to roughly two-minutes.
Musk's Twitter has not yet developed a viable video product. Twitter has about 500 remaining engineers. They are constantly working on several projects at a time, with mandates that often shift quickly based on Musk's whims and changing interests, leaving them unable to finish work that's been started, the people said.
Early in his stewardship of the company, Musk had engineers get to work on a reboot of Vine, Twitter's long-dead short-form video product, telling them they needed to launch by the end of the year. The new Vine has not materialized yet, mainly because Musk laid off or fired so many engineers that the work required to fix and modernize Vine's old codebase could not be completed, two people familiar with the company said.
Twitter as a video-centric 'media channel.'
Some advertisers speculate that Musk wants to turn Twitter into a video-centric "media channel." Yaccarino is an expert at selling ads alongside premium video content. This would give Musk a potential path to rake in billions of dollars a year in advertising that currently gets scooped up by digital video platforms like YouTube and TikTok, a person in the ad industry familiar with talks around Twitter said.
Another industry ad veteran said Musk could position Twitter as an alternative to right wing mainstays like Fox News. "If he takes on Fox and becomes a new go-to for the right wing, it could be great for him," this person added.
Missteps so far
Even this approach has been littered with missteps so far.
Republican Ron DeSantis' disastrous US presidential announcement on Twitter Spaces, which is audio-only, was interrupted by major technical glitches. A former Twitter executive said they were astonished to read news reports that the company hadn't done a dry-run before the big announcement. "We would always do stress-testing before events like live-streaming Apple product events" the exec said.
Twitter on Thursday canceled a distribution deal with The Daily Wire to premiere and promote the conservative news website's "What Is a Woman?" documentary. The Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Borering claimed Twitter made its decision after reviewing the film and finding two instances in which it misgendered transgender people. Musk later said the decision by his staffers to pull the documentary had been a mistake.
James Whatley, chief strategy officer at the creative agency Diva, said while Twitter's "pivot-to-video" might generate short-term excitement, it doesn't address concerns advertisers have about brand safety on the platform. Twitter's head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, and Head of Brand safety AJ Brown resigned from the company last week. Musk said in a tweet that the departures were related to the "What Is a Woman?" episode.
The Carlson risk for advertisers
Carlson is a purveyor of ultra-right wing talking points and alt-right conspiracies, and his 8 pm time slot on Fox News had been avoided by mainstream advertisers for years before his recent exit from the channel.
"If you're a Twitter exec headed into a meeting with the likes of Unilever or Disney, how can you look them in the eye and say, 'Come and advertise on our new video offering' when you can't guarantee that the first comment underneath it won't be a Twitter Blue subscriber with 4 followers saying something like, 'Hitler was right, actually'," Whatley said.
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