(02-17-2019 02:15 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(02-14-2019 03:01 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-14-2019 02:36 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  I have to agree with the facebook/twitter/espn+ part.

To me, the conferences that have begun to put some games on Facebook or Twitter are ahead of the curve. Sure, my 79 year old dad still likes college football and doesn't know anything about Twitter, so you lose him.

But the bottom line is that Facebook and Twitter are dominant online presences with reach that is global and in the hundreds of millions, in Facebook's case almost two billion. That doesn't mean that now is the time to sell the whole package to them, but I would definitely want to dip my toe in the water. IMO, it is foolish to ignore that kind of potential.

The problem for Facebook and Twitter is delivering content to a bigger screen.

My youngest is now 14 months post-college and she watches more on a TV than laptop or tablet compared to a year ago. My son a few months back bought a Amazon Fire TV box.

Now they may be bucking the trend but a real screen seems to be the step once you reach the point you watch video with someone else on a regular basis and right now neither Twitter nor Facebook has decent tools for that. You can cast from a second device but that's a kludge.

If they are serious about video they have to cross that bridge.

Sprinkle some skepticism about the long-term health of each. Twitter finally has had some profitable quarters but Facebook is under siege in Europe, with more than twice the population of the US and who knows what happens after an election in the US because neither party has sustained control of Congress the way they used to be able to do. Without their privacy invading practices and what I consider very shady paid reach practices Facebook isn't the cash cow they are now. One of the many reasons I gave up my website was that I had thousands who had signed up to receive my content in their feed and Facebook would hide it from all but a couple hundred unless I paid.

I guess we could question the long-term health of any media outlets, but I'd say Facebook and Twitter are at least as stable as Comcast, Disney, and CBS and whatever other media companies are out there. Bottom line is that everyone faces competition in a volatile global business environment.

As for watching on TV, you can watch Facebook video easily if you have Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV, a Samsung Smart TV, and a number of other devices (e.g., Sling, XBox One). None of those require 'casting' to the TV from a phone or other device.