Celebrating its 10th birthday, Twitter has, like every social media platform, experienced its highs and lows. And as the platform has been seen to plateau over the last 12 months, newer and arguably more flexible platforms like Snapchat have looked to capitalise on Twitter’s stagnation.

In fact, Snapchat isn’t the only platform that’s looked to make hay while the sun shines with Facebook too joining in on the party, especially in sport with its launch of the Sports Stadium.

However, despite these platforms looking to compete heavily in this market by attracting millennials, brands and sports organisations, on its 10th birthday, Twitter still very much retains the status as the number one social media companion when it comes to watching and following sports – here’s why.

1. Total fluidity

Despite Twitter having a feature that determines what is relevant and what isn’t (Moments) similar to that of Snapchat’s “Official Live Story”, the timeline feature enables Twitter users the ability to be flexible in what users see and who or what they end up following.

It was everything it’s prime competitor when it emerged on the market Facebook wasn’t, that saw it grow exponentially. People wanted a more flexible platform to be able to interact with their favourite sports stars/sports journalists etc and wanted to be able to view the opinion of others on similar topics/matches etc.

Snapchat’s arrival has seen the yellow ghost called the next ultra-flexible and dynamic platform and while that may be true with images and video, Twitter still remains extremely versatile when it comes to viewing media as well as viewing other users’ opinions of sports matches/events/occurrences. It is this ability to connect with users who we’ve never met that places Twitter above the others.

2. The hashtag

While Snapchat’s features such as face changing skins and sports update geofilters have introduced a new dimension to social media, none of them will have the everlasting effect like the ‘hashtag’ that was introduced by Twitter back in 2007. It revolutionised the digital world when it was introduced and is one of the single social media “inventions” that has made sport a whole lot easier to follow.

Threatening to ‘take off’ on Facebook, the hashtag on Twitter has made virtually any sports event or match a breeze to follow. And with the addition of the algorithm that organises more popular tweets at the top of the timeline when a hashtag is searched, Twitter continues to be the go-to platform for real-time sports insights.

3. It’s still the leading “real-time” platform

Despite other platforms striving to compete in this region, the element that absolutely sets Twitter apart is its real-time aspect. For example, if users are chasing the latest scores, the latest events or images and videos of what has happened just minutes or even seconds ago, Twitter is ideal for this and no platform has really come close.

This is because it doesn’t matter where you are, who you follow or what time it is, if its even a marginally popular sporting event, you can guarantee you’ll be able to find someone, somewhere tweeting about it.

4. Thoughts and Opinion

Twitter’s biggest current rival as the primary sports companion is Snapchat but while images and videos are great to watch back, nothing beats the ability to peruse, analyse, contest and echo opinions of others – especially people in the public eye that you wouldn’t hear from usually ie; commentators, pundits, people of general identity and former players.

Arsenal haven't won the Premier League since Twitter's been alive.

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 21, 2016

The secondary point to this reasoning is that Snapchat is visual so attention needs to be taken away from the sports event at hand in order to watch what’s going on Snapchat. Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words but when it comes to watching sports events (perhaps on television) with a social media app on your screen, words still very much rule the roost.

5. It’s no gimmick

While Snapchat has received the nod from a number of global agencies and continues to launch cool new products, it’s hard to think of Snapchat as anything but a gimmick at this stage. This is because it lacks the real authority as a platform due to the general feeling as if it doesn’t take itself seriously.

Snapchat has had to consistently introduce new features to keep it relevant whilst Twitter has rarely deviated from it’s original purpose, giving people 140 characters to talk about what they want to talk about, in this case sport. What does help Twitter is that more-or-less every agency/organisation/federation/network has invested heavily in its Twitter accounts which definitely adds authority to the platform and adds an air of credibility to Twitter as a whole.