The Newest Place To Watch Live NFL Games: Twitter

Twitter and the NFL announced Tuesday that they will be partnering to stream NFL games live from the 140-character social platform.

Thursday Night Football games — those largely boring, midweek contests that sometimes featured uniform combinations so bad that colorblind people couldn't tell who was who — will be available for free on Twitter this year, according to an NFL press release.

Other companies like Amazon, Verizon and Apple were all reportedly vying for the deal, but Twitter apparently won out. Facebook was reportedly in the mix as late as Thursday but dropped out of negotiations at the last minute because it didn't want to stream commercials.

Terms of the deal were not immediately available. Verizon just finished the final year of its $250 million deal with the league to live-stream Thursday games, according to ESPN.

It's not exactly clear how this is going to work — Do you have to find a specific tweet with a link to the livestream? Will Twitter slap a sponsored post up at the top of everybody's feed? Will there be commercials?

Here's what we do know.

The NFL said in its release that the 10 games will be streamed totally for free, no cable authentication required, for both registered users and non-users.

The games will still be available on CBS and NFL Network, too.

The deal also includes "in-game highlights from TNF as well as pre-game Periscope broadcasts from players and teams, giving fans an immersive experience before, during and after games."

Many teams, though, already do immersive Periscope broadcasts, and the NFL regularly posts highlights on Twitter in near real-time.

The move is seen as a Hail Mary (sorry, had to) for Twitter, which is desperate for anything to spark its stagnant growth that has sent shares plummeting. Company shares were down 66.5 percent over the last year, ESPN reported, and everything it tries — moments, suggested posts, an algorithmic timeline — has been met with sharp resistance by its loyal users.

It's also unclear what this means for those of us who use Twitter to follow along with commentary, give our analysis and make stupid jokes during games. I guess we'll just have to watch the game on one Twitter screen and have another one pulled up to actually read our Twitter feeds.

Great, just what we all need in our lives: more Twitter.