A Navy washout on a suicide mission plowed his car through three blocks of sidewalk pedestrian traffic in Times Square on Thursday — killing a teenage tourist and injuring 22 others.

“You were supposed to shoot me! I wanted to kill them,” Richard Rojas, 26, told police after his bloody rampage, according to sources.

The killer, who has been arrested twice for drunken driving, was heading south on Seventh Avenue at 11:55 a.m. when he pulled a sudden U-turn at West 42nd Street, then barreled north — the wrong way — sending victims flying and witnesses running for their lives.

Rojas, of The Bronx, finally crashed his Honda Accord into a stanchion at Broadway and 45th Street — then got out of the car and ran toward a group of people with his arms outstretched before being tackled by law enforcement, including a transit cop and an FBI agent.

“He was driving like a madman and screaming,” eyewitness Michael Rickerby, 24, a tourist from Tennessee told The Post. “It looked like he was trying to hit people. He had the angriest, craziest face, and he was literally going after people.”

Witnesses watched in horror as Rojas’ car raced up the sidewalk, killing Michigan tourist Alyssa Elsman, 18, who was standing near her 13-year-old sister, between 42nd and 43rd streets.

The incident sparked fears of terrorism, but officials said they have no reason to believe that played a role in the carnage.

“Based on the information we have at this moment, there is no indication that this was an act of terror,” Mayor de Blasio said.

Of the 22 injured, four were rushed to hospitals in serious condition, with open fractures and “multiple traumas,” officials said.

“None of those four are likely to perish. We’re very hopeful . . . that they will survive,” said FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro.

Rojas was taken to the Midtown South Precinct station house, where he told police that he had hoped to commit suicide-by-cop, sources said. He wasn’t drunk, but police suspect that he may have been using drugs, for which he was undergoing testing Thursday afternoon, sources said.

Rojas was arrested for drunken driving in 2008 and again in 2015. Most recently, he was busted on May 11 for threatening a man who had come to his home to get an annuity notarized.

“You’re trying to steal my identity,” he told the man as he held up a knife to his throat, according to court papers.

In that incident, he was charged with menacing and criminal possession of a weapon but pleaded guilty to harassment.

Rojas served in the Navy as an electrician’s mate fireman apprentice from 2011 to 2014 and was dishonorably discharged, sources said.

He was arrested in 2012 at a naval base in Jacksonville, Fla., for allegedly attacking a cabdriver and threatening to kill cops, according to court records obtained by Reuters.

“My life is over,” he shouted at the cabby before his bust. Rojas was charged with misdemeanor battery and resisting an officer without violence.

In 2013, he also spent a couple months behind bars in a military prison in Charleston, SC, but it’s unclear why he was locked up. A pal said he was never the same after his stint in the military and took to drinking to relieve his stress.

“He finally came home, and it was hard for him to find a job,” said Harrison Ramos, 30. “He was having a lot of bad nightmares. He was talking crazy. He was acting strange.”

Rojas would rant about “demons and devils” and became wrapped up in conspiracy theories — a far cry from his behavior before his military service, Ramos said.

“He started drinking to help with his problems. He didn’t drink before,” the friend said. “I saw him about a week ago, and I asked him how’s he doing, and he sounded lost in the world, like he wasn’t with all his five senses.”

But on Wednesday night, Rojas appeared to be in “good spirits” as he celebrated getting his impounded car back, another friend said.

“He just got his car back, a Honda,” said José Medrano, 27. “He was happy about it. He said they had taken his car for lack of payment. He just gotten it back and was happy. He was drinking last night out here, with his friends.”

The next day, Rojas used the Honda for his deadly spree.

Witnesses recalled victims being lifted off the ground by his car, as mortified pedestrians ran for shelter.

“I see this woman was mid-air and this guy is revving his engine and just going full-speed,” said deliveryman Julio Sanchez River, 20.

“He was on the curb between 42nd and 43rd. I saw a bunch of people in the aftermath that got injured.
It was a pretty scary sight. It was really gruesome. There were clothes and shoes everywhere.”

Rojas resisted until the end, punching a police officer while struggling to get away, witnesses said.

Civilians also sprung into action to help capture him, including Alphe Balde, 57, who works in Times Square for Gray Line Tours.

“I grabbed him by the neck,” he said. “I said, ‘You’re not getting away.’ ”

People help a man after a car jumped the curb in Times Square on Thursday.

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Additional reporting by Kevin Fasick and Danielle Furfaro

If you’re keeping an eye on digital marketing trends, it’s no secret that video has become a more and more significant piece of the content marketing mix.

By the year 2020 video will account for 82% of all consumer Internet traffic, according to Cisco, so it’s no longer optional for marketers to jump in and make some space for video content in their strategies.

In a digital world overflowing with content, video is one of the most effective ways to engage with audiences, since it can be a more digestible and personal form of interaction than written content. At the same time, there’s a gradual shift away from over-edited glossy videos to unscripted, unedited sharing-the-moment videos that are way more sincere and authentic.

One of the best examples—winning the hearts of audiences everywhere—is live video.

Livestreaming is one of the most rapidly growing trends now, as it provides a way to share the experiences in real-time. Brands are actively incorporating live video it into their marketing strategies, and major social media platforms are aligning themselves with livestreaming.

Snapchat and Twitter-owned Periscope have been there for a while already. Facebook caught up with the trend in 2016 with Facebook Live, and Instagram has also released a livestream broadcasting feature.

A highly valuable characteristic of live video is how versatile it is, allowing you to experiment with diverse types of content at relatively low cost.

So, this article will provide tips and tricks at how you can use video livestreaming—and do it right.

1. Live Interactive Tutorials and QAs

Marketing isn’t solely about selling your products; it’s also about showing your customer how helpful you can be, thus generating loyalty to the brand and provoking interest around the topic you cover.

One of the best ways to use live video for those purposes might be to run a live show that is both entertaining and educational—an interactive lecture or a live how-to demonstration. As an added personal touch, and to entice viewers back, you can suggest viewers brainstorm future topics to cover in the comments section.

A good example is the Office Hours hangouts broadcast by the Google Webmaster team. Once in a while, users are invited to join live to discuss webmaster topics and get questions answered by all kinds of experts joining the hangouts. The sessions are announced and questions collected through social networks in advance; once the hangout starts, the host invites viewers to jump in to make comments and share thoughts, which makes the video experience interactive.

Some tips:

• Have a plan, but be flexible. Have a specific point to cover, but don’t overthink it ; leave some space for user-contributed suggestions and questions. Be personal and helpful, and do your best finding a balance between delivering and interacting.
• Practice. Facebook Live, for instance, allows running a private live session, visible to you only. Simply adjust your privacy settings to Only Me before you tap the Go Live button—a great way to get camera-ready before going live in front of viewers.
• Prepare a schedule. Routine can help grow an audience. People get in the habit of watching the show at a certain date and time, and they’ll know when to come back to hear about the topics they’ve suggested you cover in the future.

2. Live Events

Fully two-thirds of B2B marketers use in-person events as a part of their content marketing strategy, according to research from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. Digitell’s experience has been that up to 35% of people who watch a livestream of an event attend that event in person the following year.

Streaming an event (whether a music festival or a conference) can be a fantastic way to attract new audiences despite distance and other obstacles, and build a worldwide online community around the event. It’s also a great opportunity to reach Millennials if you provide the content using new technologies they are so comfortable with.

An inspiring example is Coachella, an annual music and arts festival held in California, livestreamed in 2011 for the first time: The tickets to the event got sold out in three days in 2011 (before it was livestreamed)—and in three hours the year after. In 2016, while daily in-person attendance was close to 100,000 people, it attracted around 9 million live viewers in total.

Live video may be an even better fit for smaller events, which quite often have capacity limits. Live-streaming is a handy way to expand the capacity beyond the venue, while in-person participants still get the intimate experience of attending a closed event.

Some tips:

• Promote beforehand. Make sure to spread the word about the upcoming event beforehand; promote it across all social networks, and provide the approximate streaming schedule.
• Count down and mind the buzz. Start a countdown in your social profiles to remind followers of the start date. Come up with a catchy hashtag, use it every time you post anything about the event, and encourage your followers to take it over: Doing this will hugely help you collect feedback later, but it may also allow you to evaluate expectations before the event and clarify whether there’s anything you need to rethink.
• Make it accessible, by all means. Make sure to find a proper time to livestream. Obviously, not all viewers across the globe will be able to fit your livestream into their schedules, but try detecting the time zone of the major part of your audience, and a convenient timeframe for them to join you live. In the same way, analyze which of the social networks offering live video streaming is the most popular and accessible among your potential viewers, and use it if possible.
• Let online attendees participate a bit. Allow participation if it fits into the event format. For instance, if you are streaming a conference that has a QA session with speakers after each talk, think of a way to bring up some of the user-contributed questions from the live comments.
• Do a bit of post-production work. In some networks (Facebook and Periscope), the video you’ve streamed will stick to your profile and may reach even a wider audience afterward, so you may also think of doing a moderate amount of post-production: Add an attractive description, or cut out the dead moments to make the experience as great for the later viewers.

3. Interviews and Discussions

An entertaining and useful way to use livestreaming is to host live interviews and discussions.

Invite an interesting guest or an influencer in your niche (to your studio or remotely) to cover a hot topic, share stories, or discuss current news. Allow users to ask questions along the way and pick up the most interesting ones occasionally during the discussion (or in the end, if it’s an interview your livestreaming). If there’s a danger that the show is becoming too promotional or company-centered, a great way to shift the focus to real people would be to arrange short, candid interview sessions with team members or customers (a brave move!).

A good example is the show streamed live, twice a week, by Live Streaming Pros. Occasionally, the hosts invite a guest to share an experience, a strategy, or proven tips. At the end, user-contributed questions are answered. A nice tip from Luria Petrucci, who hosts the show: Try not to rush while everybody is joining the livestream; begin with a kind of « question of the day » while monitoring the arriving viewers (and first answer it yourself to win some time, as the comments may display with a slight delay).

Some tips:

• Promote and tease. Share some info about the guest who will be joining you, and drop hints about the important topic you’ll be discussing.
• Prepare. This is not about producing polished webinars; still, you should have a plan in mind about how to structure the conversation and which questions to ask your guest.
• Involve the viewers. Again, integrate questions from viewers into the discussion, or address questions at the end of the show (make clear that’s when you’ll get to them). Address viewers by name when referring to their questions.

4. Announcements and Live Launches

If there is exciting company news to share, an announcement to make, or a new product to launch… you can of course share the news with a press-release, on your website, and through social networks. However, if you livestream this kind of content, you will make viewers feel that you care about them enough to announce the news « personally » and therefore build in-the-moment excitement.

When launching a product, for example, you can reveal the details gradually and offer the viewers the intimate experience of seeing it first. If opening a store, you can share with the audience the step-by-step process it took to reach your goal, sharing unhappy and happy moments, and drawing in viewers and building a relationship with them along the way.

You can sum up the livestream with a live QA session to hear immediate feedback and cover the most pressing questions.

Adobe took this approach in 2015 with a 24-hour Periscope session to release its new product, Creative Cloud, and to share the excitement and its « vision for a connected creative process. » Apart from discussing new features, the main idea of the broadcast was to let viewers engage with the teams behind the product and ask any questions in a chat with 24 different team members—a great way to add the personal touch to the presentation!

Some tips:

• Tease. Reveal details bit by bit, provide a teasing overview, but leave some space for curiosity by not giving away too much info.
• Offer something special. Use live video to announce a special offer for your consumers; provide an exclusive special for viewers/online community.
• Involve. Once people know you pay attention to their feedback, and once they feel involved and see the real efforts you’ve made behind the product, it will be of much higher perceived value to them.
• Embrace the comments. While streaming, keep a balance between delivering the news and reacting to the comments and questions.
• Show gratitude. Take a moment to thank your audience for coming along with you.

5. A Peek Behind the Scenes or at Company Culture

Nowadays, video is one of the best formats for storytelling, so it can be a great way to humanize the brand and make people feel they can relate to it. It can shed light on big companies that seem to lack transparency, and it can let consumers explore areas often inaccessible to the public.

Sharing company culture is a fantastic opportunity to break down the walls between a company/brand and its customers, helping to establish a more genuine connection.

Live video allows you to invite the audience to be your digital guest, and show viewers around your office; giving a sneak peek into how you get your work done is a proven way to engage.

Perhaps the most well-known example is General Electric, which started using Periscope to boost transparency and provide a behind-the-curtains look at the corporation. During « Drone Week, » the company shared a drone’s-eye view of its manufacturing facilities and machinery at GE sites across five different industries. The questions and comments followed the livestream itself and via the #droneweek hashtag in other social networks. According to Sydney Williams, global digital marketing manager at GE, the program was a huge success, so GE is planning on doing it again in summer 2017.

Some tips:

• Promote. Yet again. Frame it as a personal invitation to be your guest.
• Ask for feedback in advance. Collect the feedback before broadcasting; pay attention to what exactly the viewers are willing to see (company’s workspace or tools, the process of baking the cakes you sell, or members of the team). Ask viewers to prepare questions they would like to ask about your company.
• Be personal. If possible, greet the viewers arriving to your stream by name, and try answering the most interesting questions as honestly as you can.
• Include a call to action. Unobtrusively remind the viewers of other ways to engage and follow your company through social networks for even more interesting content.

The Outcome

« Afterlive » is as important as your actual in-the-moment, live video, so a common tip for any type of livestreaming would be analyze the results!

It would be a real time-saver to use a social-media listening tool (like Awario) to gather and systematize the feedback. Moreover, to react to the feedback right-away, retweet and repost best user quotes to your company social profiles. And mark the most constructive comments to help you revise and improve your process.

Live video is making its way to people’s screens more and more, so it’s high time to find your own way and make use of the trend—especially if you’re ready to think outside the box and to open the door to live feedback and new, genuine connections!

Chelsea Manning is scheduled to be released from Fort Leavenworth, a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kans., on Wednesday. In January, then-President Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year prison sentence. She had requested clemency.

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Chelsea Manning is scheduled to be released from Fort Leavenworth, a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kans., on Wednesday. In January, then-President Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year prison sentence. She had requested clemency.

Charlie Riedel/AP

Pvt. Chelsea Manning will leave a military prison in Kansas and return to civilian life Wednesday, seven years after she was taken into custody for what is seen as the largest leak of classified data in U.S. history.

The 35-year prison sentence Manning received as punishment for that crime was described as unprecedented when it was handed down. Before he left office, President Obama shortened the sentence to seven years.

In court, Manning had pleaded guilty to leaking secret information — but she was acquitted of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, in July of 2013.

On the morning of Manning’s scheduled release, a fundraising campaign for her post-release expenses met its goal of raising $150,000. The fund was set up by her lawyer, Chase Strangio of the ACLU. Separately, musician Michael Stipe has led the release of a benefit album whose proceeds will go to the former soldier.

Military personnel at the prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where Manning has been held have not released many details about her release that’s scheduled for sometime Wednesday. Manning’s support team at the American Civil Liberties Union is also providing few details, citing her need for privacy and time to adjust. They’ve said she plans to live in Maryland, where she has family.

Among the records Manning has admitted to passing on to WikiLeaks was a video showing a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed 11 men and 750,000 classified documents that contained military and diplomatic dispatches.

Rights groups have sharply criticized the way the government handled Manning’s case; they also faulted the official response to what Amnesty International USA calls « possible war crimes committed by the military » that are depicted in the records she released.

U.S. Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, seen here in an undated handout photo, will be released from a military prison on Wednesday.

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U.S. Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, seen here in an undated handout photo, will be released from a military prison on Wednesday.

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« Chelsea’s treatment is especially galling given that nobody has been held accountable for the alleged crimes that she brought to light, » says Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA. « While we celebrate her freedom, we will continue to call for an independent investigation into the potential human rights violations she exposed, and for protections to be put in place to ensure whistleblowers like Chelsea are never again subjected to such appalling treatment. »

Arrested in 2010, Manning had been serving in Iraq and was known as Bradley Manning. After her conviction, she announced she was a transgender woman and changed her name to Chelsea. Manning is walking out of prison early because then-President Obama commuted her sentence in January.

Steven Nelson, of U.S. News and World Report, talked to NPR’s All Things Considered on Sunday:

« Part of the reason that the White House justified granting her clemency was because it was so much longer than other recent leak sentences. In a lot of the cases, people plead guilty and get maybe a year in prison. But 35 years really shocked people. And the seven years that had already been served was seen as enough by the Obama White House. »

Nelson also told host Mary Louise Kelly that there’s a difference between Manning’s case and that of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor, who leaked information.

« Manning as a 22-year-old wanted to spark a broad worldwide discussion of various injustices she perceived in scandals, whereas Snowden who had access to more highly classified documents had a very specific policy debate he wanted to start about surveillance. And he left the country, rather than be arrested.

« When the Obama administration was preparing to grant Manning clemency, they drew the distinction that Manning had faced trial, that Manning had expressed some degree of contrition. Snowden, of course, is totally unrepentant, feels he did the right thing. So that’s a real distinction. He hasn’t been tried, he’s not sorry, and Manning was both. »

While in prison, Manning has had to transition as a woman in a male military prison. She has tried to commit suicide twice.

Bust since her impending release was announced, Manning’s outlook has gotten brighter. Last week she released a statement saying:

« For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea. I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world. Freedom used to be something that I dreamed of but never allowed myself to fully imagine. Now, freedom is something that I will again experience with friends and loved ones after nearly seven years of bars and cement, of periods of solitary confinement, and of my health care and autonomy restricted, including through routinely forced haircuts. I am forever grateful to the people who kept me alive, President Obama, my legal team and countless supporters.

« I watched the world change from inside prison walls and through the letters that I have received from veterans, trans young people, parents, politicians and artists. My spirits were lifted in dark times, reading of their support, sharing in their triumphs, and helping them through challenges of their own. I hope to take the lessons that I have learned, the love that I have been given, and the hope that I have to work toward making life better for others. »