Twitter is now in the business of streaming live sports.
On Wednesday, the company began broadcasting live coverage of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, through a partnership with ESPN and the All England Tennis Club.
The stream, although relatively difficult to discover organically, is available via a twitter.com/ilive link.
The page will appear to be a departure from what Twitter users are used to seeing. It features a live video box to the left of the page, while a feed of related tweets are shown to the right.
Any tweet a user posts while watching the feed, automatically includes the #Wimbledon hashtag.
Related: How to stream Wimbledon 2016 online
Twitter says the streams are an early test of its coverage and are likely to be in preparation for the 2016 season NFL games it won the rights to earlier this year.
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Twitter will hope the addition of live events, alongside its excellent Moments initiative, will help it grow a stagnant user base.
Its active users have shown signs of falling in recent times, although were brought back to growth during the last quarter.
Given the amount of tweets generated by major sporting events on the 140-character social network, adding live streaming offers an increased chance of keeping users engaged.
Would you send more tweets if you were watching an event on Twitter as it happened? Or do you enjoy Twitter as a second screen? Share your thoughts below.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
