Twitter Gaining Serious Momentum, But Will Wall Street Take Notice?

The product development team at Twitter has been busy.

The much-maligned social network that has focused all its powers on the live event, has debuted its live, HD video within relevant tweets on its timeline with hashtags like #Wimbledon and #Wimblen2016, putting its stamp on coverage of the legendary tennis championship.

Earlier this year, when Twitter announced a live-streaming partnership with the NFL as a way to help the league build  younger and more digital and mobile audience growth, many wondered the impact that it would have on the company’s perception in the marketplace. Rollouts like this live feed at Wimbledon, which seems in partnership with ESPN, shows Twitter is much more focused on the mobile part of its product offering versus trying to serve people sitting at work on their office computers and laptops.

The live feed execution comes on the heels of the company announcing that it has added former Facebook CTO Bret Taylor to its Board of Directors.

"“Bret brings to our Board a great mind for consumer products and technologies that will be invaluable to the company as we execute our plans for 2016 and beyond,” said board chairman Omid Kordestani in a press release. “His skills also complement those of our other recent Board additions, who bring expertise in finance, media, and entrepreneurship.”"

Should Twitter keep making subtle and calculated bets on both mobile and live event streaming within its environment, it will be interesting to see if it helps growth and revenue issues. One can assume that once video stream impressions become more accurately monetized, the advertising revenue, especially on mobile, should increase and judging from CEO Jack Dorsey’s announcement Tweet, Taylor’s expertise in generating social currency and revenues will be key.

Adding Taylor, well-versed in Facebook’s mobile strategy, could pay big time dividends as Facebook’s stock price boom at the end of 2014 and all of 2015 was credited in large part to mobile monetization. Twitter stock saw a spike yesterday following the Taylor announcement and it seems to be gaining momentum on Wall Street. Many pundits believe Twitter is ripe for to be acquired, possibly by Google, after news dropped several weeks back that Microsoft had pulled in LinkedIn. But anyone who follows technology closely will tell you these type of product rollouts show great vital signs.

Whether Twitter proves growth and revenues in an unstable advertising environment remains to be seen, but Twitter seems to be gaining some positive momentum in its plan to deliver fans everything surrounding live events.