Of all the links tweeted around during the Egypt protests, one was shared the most: the link to Al Jazeera English’s live stream. And for an international channel desperate for U.S. distribution, it was all by design.
Al Jazeera used Twitter’s “promoted tweets” to get out the word, sponsoring various keywords, from Egypt to Tahrir Square. As users searched, Al Jazeera tweets were pinned to the top of the results.
Explains Twitter’s Robin Sloan, “As stories pick up steam – for instance, word gets out that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is about to make another statement – the team tweets relevant information and promotes it, making sure it’s ready and waiting if and when ‘Mubarak’ becomes a Trending Topic and Twitter users click his name, looking for more information.” Al Jazeera said they used promoted tweets “just like a news desk.” Smart.
In the end, Twitter was one of the live stream’s largest referrers, Sloan said. “The Al Jazeera team has demonstrated something remarkable: used in a particular way, Twitter can be a TV distribution platform, too.”