It was rife with technical and directing problems, but millions of people checked out the BuzzFeed News special Election Night Live: We did it America streaming live on Twitter Tuesday night. According to a company press release, the stream drew 6.8 million unique viewers, peaking at 244,000 concurrent streams.
Election Night Live: We did it America was certainly different. Staffers did shots of alcohol. It was, in the words of CJR, “long on internet memes and short on the analytical minutiae that drives so much live political coverage.” It was irreverent, but not always in service of advancing the story. It was clear as the night went on that staffers in the New York City-based office weren’t happy that the night belonged to Donald Trump.
Seven million uniques sounds impressive, but keep in mind – they count a unique viewer as anyone who watched for at least three seconds. It saw an average of 165,000 concurrent users at any one time. The show was on for more than six hours.
Notes the press release:
Tuesday was also the most-Tweeted election day ever, with more than 75 million global election-related Tweets sent from before polls opened to just after president-elect Donald Trump’s 3am ET speech.
It was a young, highly mobile audience. BuzzFeed says 83% of the audience were under 35 and 73% watched on mobile devices.