Bloomberg Will Launch 24 Hour Social News Network on Twitter

Bloomberg’s new Twitter network is expected to launch on December 18.  Included with the launch are six founding partners: Goldman Sachs, Infiniti, TD Ameritrade, CA Technologies, AT&T and CME Group.  More are expected to join.  The average price point of these partnerships is anywhere from $1.5 million to $3 million.  Which gives Bloomberg an eight-figure revenue during its first year.

So why is this happening? And more importantly, why does this even matter?  This investment is part of a major push by the company to stay competitive.  Especially when we are seeing companies like Google and Facebook cornering the digital advertising market.  No, this isn’t a news network where they only talk about Twitter.  This is going to be the first 24-hour social news network on Twitter.  Bloomberg is hiring about 50 people to staff this new project.

Bloomberg Media CEO, Justin Smith, indicates “In this age of the Google/Facebook duopoly, a relentless focus on invention and innovation is the only way to succeed. The fruits of disruption don’t and shouldn’t only belong to the dominant tech (aka ‘media’) platforms.”  Even though Twitter has attempted to level this playing field between itself and other tech giants, it’s still a primary source of news for a lot of people.  I am included in that group of people.

Bloomberg will be the first to capitalize on that in a way that is likely going to benefit a lot of people.  How will this be beneficial exactly?

• Bloomberg Media’s digital advertising revenue has grown over 25% year to date, through Q3 and Q4 advertising bookings are pacing even stronger. The company just has its best-performing quarter ever, largely thanks to advertising sales revenue. Its Q3 total advertising revenue grew more than 5% year over year, driven by digital growth in custom content, video, audio, and programmatic.
• Bloomberg today offers 27 different ad tech products, which are developed in-house. The site’s current design is a product of in-house engineers pushing for a clean, scrolling user experience that mimics the interactions a user would typically see on a tech platform. An in-house product called Javelin was built to cut page load time by 30-50%.

All of this means that this is going to be a very interesting marriage.  There are some incredible revenue possibilities based on those numbers alone.  But what might this do for Twitter and even the little guy?  Well, I’m wondering if this is part of a bigger attempt to combat fake news?  They could, in theory, point to Bloomberg as a credible news source on their platform, even if they get caught with some less than credible sources lurking around.

Not only that, but this will be a good partnership because a lot of journalists are already using Twitter as a business tool.  They are mostly doing it as a way to build their own brand or link to stories they’ve written for.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As I said, this is a great way to get more factual information out into the world, so I definitely see this as a win for Twitter, Bloomberg, and even those of us who use Twitter as a way to read the news.