Twitter Debate Fun Is Contagious

A few more of these presidential debates and Twitter might get hot again.

But I’m not sure the rest of us can handle it.

Twitter was the dominant site for Sunday’s debate, smartly taking advantage of its compatibility with the forum.

The social media site gained prominence last summer when folks such as actor-comedian Patton Oswalt hilariously live-tweeted the packed GOP debates.

The candidates, their personalities, the circumstances – it all fed perfectly into what Twitter does best: the sarcastic, flip, smart-alecky one-liner.

See Oswalt work it to perfection:

Rand Paul is cornering the "smattering of applause" demographic. #GOPDebate

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 7, 2015

Donald Trump's views on immigration are based solely on the first 8 minutes of SCARFACE. #GOPDebate

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 7, 2015

Despite these fun episodes, things have not gone well in general for CEO Jack Dorsey and Twitter. The company has struggled to monetize its platform and advertising dollars continue to fall.

On the content side, the debates are user gold for Twitter. The company stepped up its participation with livestream events, and Sunday’s debate was by far its best result to date.

Twitter's livestream of Bloomberg Politics' debate broadcast reached 3.2 million unique viewers, an increase of 30 percent over the first presidential debate, which reached 2.5 million unique viewers.

The company put out the following happy press release:

Sunday night's livestream of the Bloomberg Politics broadcast, part of a partnership between Twitter and Bloomberg Media, had an average minute audience (AMA) of 369K viewers, up 7% from 344K AMA during the first presidential debate. 70% of Sunday night's live viewers were under the age of 35.

The second presidential debate was the most Tweeted ever, with more than 17 million debate-related Tweets sent. These Tweets were seen more than 3.6 billion times worldwide on and off of Twitter. Sunday was also the most Tweeted day of the entire 2016 election, with nearly 30 million Tweets sent as audiences turned to Twitter for news, commentary and reactions to what's happening now.

Ad inventory for all four debates has sold out, and Twitter's livestream of the presidential debates is over-delivering on advertiser expectations. Twitter's mid-roll ads in the pre- and post-debate shows over-delivered on impression estimates by 377% with still one debate to go.

I’m not sure whether Twitter is here for the long run – it is rumored to be a buyout candidate – but it sure is a fun place to be during these debates.

So what did the financial services industry think of the debate? Let’s close with a look at what some people we follow tweeted:

2. Trump spent most of the debate on offense. Hillary was on defense – she struggled on it and suffered for it.

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 10, 2016

"This was not a good night in American politics." -MSNBC #debate

— Hannah Sorensen (@HSorensenFargo) October 10, 2016

Was Trump's slam on Pence during the #debate a payback for Pence not defending Trump during the #VPdebate?

— MichaelKitces (@MichaelKitces) October 10, 2016

Fact-Checkers Ignore False Claims from #Hillary About #ObamaCare https://t.co/KjWs3y2qKJ #healthcare #debate @IBDinvestors

— Sally Pipes (@sallypipes) October 11, 2016

Finally, esurance came up with a clever campaign to capitalize on the campaign fatigue setting in with voters:

Two candidates. One #debate. Feel like leaving the USA yet? Tell us where using #MakeYourEscapeSweeps & you could win $10K to take off. pic.twitter.com/KoUMgA3jzC

— Esurance (@esurance) October 10, 2016

InsuranceNewsNet Senior Editor John Hilton has covered business and other beats in more than 20 years of daily journalism. John may be reached at [email protected].

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