Twitter Arrives on Apple TV

Twitter is coming to the TV screen.

The social media service said that starting Wednesday a new video-centric app will be available for Apple Inc.'s Apple TV box, as well as Amazon.com Inc's Fire TV and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox One.

The app—which will contain only video, photos and tweets curated by the company—arrives on time for Twitter Inc.'s pivotal live-streaming debut ofÂ Thursday night football.

By making live broadcasts available on a bigger screen, Twitter's TV apps could help address whether people would want to tune into hourslong games from the National Football League or Major League Baseball on a five-inch smartphone screen.

It can also encourage people who have yet to find a reason to use Twitter at a time when the company is trying to revive user growth. Among the oft-cited reasons why people say they don't use Twitter is because they find it confusing and difficult.

Twitter has made live-streaming the linchpin of a business strategy to turn itself into a prime place to watch video. It has signed a raft of deals to stream broadcasts from partners that include the NFL, MLB, the National Basketball Association, National Hockey League and Pac-12 Networks for sports, and Bloomberg News and Cheddar for financial news.

Its $10 million deal with the NFL to broadcast 10 Thursday games is the highest-profile score of the bunch, with sponsorship packages commanding as much as $8 million. The first game kicks off Thursday between the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills.

Anyone with Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV or Xbox One will be able to watch these live broadcasts. A Twitter account or pay TV subscription won't be necessary.

The TV apps are different from Twitter's mobile and desktop services, which present a mostly unfiltered stream of tweets from people users follow.

The apps look the same across users and are built around video, highlighting the latest professional live streams, Vine clips and Periscope live broadcasts.

The streams will appear on one side of the screen with a curated feed of tweets next to them. Viewers will be able to hide the running Twitter feed by blowing up the broadcast to full-screen view, as is the case with the live-stream experience in Twitter's iOS app by turning the screen horizontally.

In the case of Apple TV, viewers will be able to watch two videos at the same time, side-by-side. For instance, if spectators at a baseball game tweet videos taken from their seats, viewers at home can pull up one of those videos from their Twitter feeds to watch at the same time as the official live broadcast.

The apps will also be available in some markets overseas. The Apple TV app will be available world-wide, while Twitter for Xbox One will be available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the U.K. Twitter for Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick can be accessed in the U.K.

Outside of these new TV apps, Twitter's NFL live streams can be found at tnf.twitter.com or in the Moments tab in Twitter's iOS and Android apps.

Write to Yoree Koh at yoree.koh@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 14, 2016 09:25 ET (13:25 GMT)

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