Bloomberg Media’s only-for-Twitter live news network TicToc has gone live. The mobile-first news service was announced in May this year by Michael R. Bloomberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Coverage on the network currently focuses global general interest news and features a mix of live video and news reports from Bloomberg, along with a real-time related conversation on Twitter. Twitter users can participate in the conversation by Tweeting with #tictocnews.
TicToc by Bloomberg will have a dedicated team of editors, producers, social media analysts, product developers, engineers, designers, and marketers that will use Bloomberg’s resources to disseminate news via TicToc. Note that Bloomberg already live streams three of its daily Bloomberg Television programs on Twitter.
The media group has landed seven sponsors as the founding partners of TicToc: AT&T Business, CA Technologies, CME Group, Goldman Sachs, INFINITI, SAS, TD Ameritrade.
The content on TicToc
The Twitter handle will have a visual presentation of news for a mobile with videos, data, and graphics. The company said in a statement that users will have access to two types of news content:
Breaking News: Live coverage for key events will be presented alongside real-time facts and Tweets about the event.
Global News Update: An hourly update of global news will be available in short, digestible clips, refreshed at the top of each hour. The tweets will also include slightly longer clips that put news into context, providing deeper analysis of the top news stories of the moment. At launch, top news coverage will be updated from 6am to 10pm EST, expanding to 24 hours in early 2018, while weekend coverage will include regular news updates, prioritizing live breaking news events.
Mobile-first news
News organizations are trying to capture mobile-first consumers in a big way.
-Recently, Zee Media and Botworx.ai partnered to create AI-powered chatbots for Zee News, WION and DNA. The chatbots will be integrated into Facebook, Messenger and Facebook Live for video. International publishers like CNN, Guardian and Huffington Post also have chatbots on Facebook messenger that operate in a similar manner. Some like Huffington Post send selected stories out for their subscribers to read. Others like Guardian are fully interactive, responding to queries with relevant news articles and clips.
-Last month, BloombergQuint launched its own news chatbot platform on the messaging platform Whatsapp.
-YouTube had added a ‘Breaking News’ carousel on its list of feeds on the site’s homepage, with links to newly uploaded clips from several news channels
