Now the NFL will be on Twitter for real, but how?

The NFL has been on Twitter since Twitter was invented. A live commentary and conversation platform was a natural marriage for a sport that has fits and starts with explosive plays, huddles, and then another explosion some 30 seconds later, all with sharable moments made perfect for Vine and the like. It’s just enough time to react to every single play if you really want to, ephemeral enough where you can forget about what was said just as it disappears from your timeline.

Baseball too lends itself to Twitter, but try and grasp the feel of a basketball game, hockey game or soccer game while also trying to give your commentary via Twitter. It’s really hard¹. So now the NFL won’t just be a point of conversation on the micro-blogging platform, it will actually be streamed there as Twitter secured the rights in a bidding competition, taking on the likes of media powerhouses Yahoo! and Amazon.

Roger Goodell announced it via Twitter, naturally, but then the NFL quickly followed up with an old school press release.

Partners since 2013 through the Twitter Amplify program, 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.

In addition to live streaming video of NFL action, the partnership includes in-game highlights from TNF as well as pre-game Periscope broadcasts from players and teams, giving fans an immersive experience before, during and after games.

With this partnership, the NFL has again extended its digital presence, making the most valuable content in sports and entertainment available across multiple digital platforms free for all users.

The devil, however, is in the details. WFNY’s Scott is a little more glass-half-full on this one, but part of what makes Twitter great during a live NFL game is that it’s an accompaniment to the action either in front of you in person or live on a giant television screen. What happens to Twitter when it’s actually streaming the event? I end up with a lot more questions than answers, and I’m guessing Twitter is now working furiously to enact strategies to make the most of their deal.

Let’s talk about the biggest questions for Twitter.

What is the interface going to look like for streaming?

Will Twitter invent a way for live-Tweeting to take place while video is playing on the screen?

Could the action stay streaming in the background while users tweet and then they bring it back up for the play?

Part of the issue I have with Twitter winning this deal is that using up my phone’s real estate for a streaming video means that I can’t use that same screen for what Twitter presumably wants me to do with it. I have no idea how they solve this in both desktop and mobile settings. I wonder if they have any idea.

Is this just a play to get more users signed up?

One of Twitter’s biggest issues — at least in the eyes of Wall Street — is its slowed growth rates. Sustained growth becomes increasingly more difficult the larger you get. That’s just basic math. For example, when you grow 30 percent from 100 to 130, in order to sustain that 30 percent growth rate you need to grow by 39 next time, and more than 50 after that. I don’t always agree with this idea that companies even should sustain a growth rate, as long as they do continue to, you know, grow. Alas, that’s been a big criticism of analysts in the stock game, so maybe it is leading Twitter to go to non-core businesses like streaming video to pull in people who haven’t tried the medium just yet.

Just so we all understand each other, Twitter is somewhere around 300 million users and Facebook is likely over 1.3 billion users by this point. both mediums are incredibly popular and have been increasingly woven into everyday fabric — what shows don’t have hashtags at the bottom of the screen at this point? — but one is obviously in the shadows of the other.

But with that in mind, Twitter’s stock was up about 0.5 percent while I was writing this during what the immediate aftermath of the Twitter- NFL news.² Either investors aren’t particularly excited by the deal or they have just as many questions as I do exactly how this will work and what it will do for the company or its users.

1. Ed. Note: Potentially why NBA Twitter is light years ahead of the rest. [↩]
2. Ed note: It’s up 1.44 percent on Wednesday. [↩]