Two million people watched Tesla deliver its all-electric Class 8 Semi trucks to its first customers live on Twitter. The Tesla Semi, which is a non-consumer product targeted at business-to-business customers, was received by Frito-Lay and PepsiCo on Thursday night at the company’s Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada.
Tesla always live streams its events on its YouTube channel, and its Cyber Rodeo event topped 3 million views. However, Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, is now the owner and CEO of Twitter, and he promoted Tesla’s live stream on the platform.
Tesla Semi Truck launch in 5 mins! https://t.co/jG3s9wuVGb
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022
Aside from YouTube influencers who held their own live-streamed watch parties for the delivery events and Tesla’s own channel, many watched the event right on Twitter.
Tesla has over 2 million followers on its YouTube account, but as you can see in the screenshot below, the live stream had 974,702 views at this time. That number is expected to go up over time when more people watch the replay.
Tesla’s other live stream events, such as the Cyber Rodeo at Giga Texas and AI Day part 2, crossed the one-million view mark. Some of its other live-streamed events, such as its Q3 2022 financial results and Q&A webcast, received under 500,000 views.
On Twitter, Tesla’s live stream topped 2 million views. Although Tesla’s live stream on Twitter had higher views, there is a lot of feedback and room for improvement. There were a few tweets asking for the ability to stream from Twitter to the TV.
Other feedback and requests included allowing to set the live stream as a background with some transparency so users can tweet while watching the event.
@elonmusk Oh. And background play on IOS so we can use other apps while watching a Twitter video.
— Darnell Arford (@DarnellTheGeek) December 2, 2022
Gail Alfar, the owner of the WhatUpTesla blog, told Teslarati, “I almost always watch SpaceX launches on Twitter live, so I was super happy to hear that a Tesla event will be live on Twitter! And watching Tesla events is a family event for us, so we all wanted to gather together, and the TV does not have a Twitter app (yet), so we all watched it on YouTube. We are looking forward to a possible Twitter app for TVs!”
Al Shen told Teslarati that he also watched the live stream on YouTube.
“I decided to live stream the Tesla Semi delivery event via Youtube for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to share the live stream experience with a few Youtube personalities that were conducting virtual “watch parties” and allowing for more engaged interaction in real-time. Live streaming on Twitter still has room to evolve.”
“If there’s a designed live stream watch party feature where a more controlled group of guests could view, comment, and still readily and easily tweet from their accounts, that would be exciting. Half the fun is the engagement with others.”
Twitter’s live stream feature does have a lot of room for improvement, and given Elon Musk’s openness to feedback from his followers, we may begin to see those improvements over time. Did you watch the event on Twitter or on YouTube? What are your thoughts?
Disclosure: Johnna is a $TSLA shareholder and believes in Tesla’s mission.
Your feedback is welcome. If you have any comments or concerns or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter at @JohnnaCrider1.
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