Twitter launches live stream of Gujarat elections 2017

Twitter has announced that it will live stream the conversations related to the Gujarat elections on its platform as the political interest and discourse on the polls generated over 800,000 tweets in the past week on the microblogging website.

The live stream of elections will be available in English and Hindi and will take place today when the second phase of polling is being held, and on counting day December 18, the company said in a statement.

"We are excited to launch the first live stream of elections in India providing people with the opportunity to follow all the election-related action in real-time, with the best analysis and commentary in the business," said Amrita Tripathi, Acting Head for News Partnerships, Twitter India.

The live stream is available for free to logged-in and logged-out users on Twitter and connected devices globally. Each stream will be accompanied by a Twitter timeline featuring in real time Gujarat Election-related conversation. Last month, Twitter recorded a growing interest in Gujarat politics as conversations related to the Assembly election rose 20 percent in November.

Twitter also launched initiatives such as real-time updates on the campaign trail and connect voters to politicians on key issues. The company also unveiled an emoji, available till December 22, which can be activated using hashtags such as #GujaratElection2017, #GujaratElection, #BattleforGujarat or #ElectionCaravan.