Twitter kicked off its live broadcast of NFL Thursday Night Football with the New York Jets and the Buffalo Bills. As a huge football fanatic myself, I was excited to ease into the weekend and tune in - while begging Buffalo WR Sammy Watkins to catch many touchdowns for my fantasy football team (he did not).

For science, I tuned in on my iPad and iPhone while also watching on my TV to compare the experience. Accessing the stream was easy. I got a notification on my phone that a football game was happening on Twitter. As soon as I opened the app, I received a large banner at the top telling me to “click here to watch.” It was also the top item on Twitter “Moments.”

The stream itself was pretty simple. Viewers were presented with the broadcast of the game alongside a Twitter feed of conversation surrounding the game.

The Stream

Most importantly, when it comes to football, the quality of the stream was fantastic and I was streaming over LTE data, not WiFi. It felt like a true game watching experience, as it was the same broadcast – everything I saw and heard on TV I was seeing and hearing on Twitter, including the announcers and even the halftime show. It’s still a stream, however, and was on about a thirty-second delay (AKA two plays behind).

The Feed

I was most interested to see what the Twitter feed was like. How was Twitter going to curate the tweets that populated the feed? Would they police NSFW content? Throughout the game, I didn’t see anything that offended me personally, but I definitely saw some questionable content. There were also some random posts that had nothing to do with the game, but for the most part everything seemed pretty topical. The feed operated very similar to Twitter’s search function where it pulls in whatever is relevant to your search query based on thematic key words, whether or not the official hashtags (#TNF, #NYJvsBUF) were used. There are pros and cons to this approach.

The main benefit: What I like to call “Sports Twitter.” Sports Twitter is the best Twitter. It’s super reactive and produces hilarious gifs, memes, and Vines. As is, the feed lets Sports Twitter run wild and I will always support that.

However, the feed was not perfect. Because the game itself was on a 30 second delay, tweets were pulling in before plays happened. For example, in the first quarter, the feed pulled in tweets talking about Darrelle Revis getting torched for a touchdown before the play even started on the live stream. About 30 seconds later, viewers saw Darrelle Revis get torched for a touchdown on Twitter.

While it’s great that the feed pulled in tweets from everywhere and everyone, the feed pulled in tweets from everywhere and everyone. And that’s the biggest issue right now. Twitter’s most avid users have put a lot of time into tailoring their feed to populate the content they deem most relevant by the sources they trust most, meaning there is minimal value added to seeing the average Joe’s tweet. For instance, I follow my favorite team’s beat writers, a doctor who diagnoses football injuries, and various experts. I didn’t get to see their thoughts on the game, but I did find out that @kristie_latrese is watching the game with her man - important intel for my fantasy football team.

Suggestion Box

Overall the experience was pretty good, and there are certainly opportunities for growth. The commercials on the stream were different from what I saw on TV, which will allow brands to buy ad space specifically catered to their tech-connected, sports-enthusiast audience on Twitter. Things I would have liked to see:

- Box Score – it would be great to see the stats from the game, especially with the popularity of Fantasy Football. I had to go to separate apps for this info.

- Option to pull in your own feed or Twitter list alongside the full Twitter-verse commentary – it would create a much more personalized experience for whoever is tuning in.

- Less touchdowns from Matt Forte

While I’m not turning in my television to solely rely on Twitter to watch TNF, this is more than sufficient for someone without cable, traveling, or on-the-go. Those who tuned-in on Twitter seemed to echo that sentiment.

However, if Twitter can streamline and personalize the experience, making the stream a one-stop-shop, then they really will have something special on their hands.

Christopher Chan, Associate, Social Strategy, DigitasLBi