Periscope – bringing live stream into social media
First, there was Meerkat – the iPhone app that allowed mobile livestreaming to become a new revolution for mobile users. Twitter, however, decided to roll its sleeves and get down to some dirty business by creating its own livestreaming app called Periscope. Despite its similarities to Meerkat, Periscope screams style and with far more appealing functionalities that satisfy both convenience and entertainment. Get ready Apple users: Periscope is changing the world of mobile livestream and you don’t want to miss it.
Inside The Scope
When first using Periscope, a Twitter account is required. If you already have a Twitter account the tutorial is simple to follow as it demonstrates how to activate features such as your camera, microphone and location services.
Periscope encourages community. Within seconds of starting the app, suggestions of popular users appear with follow buttons that proved tempting to tap. Notifications are sent when someone you follow on Twitter joins Periscope. While watching other live streams, viewers can tap on the screen to their heart’s content, making other little hearts appear. Viewers can also leave comments which appear as little bubbles that disappear after a few seconds. However, the host must speak out loud in order to respond to the comments which encourages a strange, but engaging interaction and changes the game of community living entirely.
A defining feature is the option to save your streams. But take note of your phone storage as the livestreams can easily reach multi-hour streams leaving your phone gasping for breath. Another interesting feature is the Watch section which shows popular livestreams that are available to replay. However, Periscope can learn a thing or two from the video property, Vine, and better organise how the featured videos are shown. When I first opened the Watch section, it was confusing trying to figure out that the videos being shown were popular live streams that I could replay.
The Bigger Picture
The app is incredibly clean and simple in terms of its aesthetics. Its functionalities only encourage users to invest more of their time in this fun, simple and exciting app. However, Twitter should definitely work on letting users embed streams saved on Periscope’s servers into other video based websites.
Periscope finally provides young users the ability to create exciting moments through the world of livestreaming as it changes the way we interact online. Periscope isn’t just for fun, but it can also be used as a powerful tool. With Periscope events aren’t just ‘breaking’ but they’re being remembered – and stored. Periscope is a fresh way of sharing what you’re doing or what’s going on around you. However, it still feels like the excitement of the app relies heavily on the personal experiences of the user – unless you’ve got a talking dog or a massive explosion happening where you are, Periscope can also become another platform for pretentious and mundane streams of people feeding for attention. Perhaps it’s up to the user to take it to its next best level – so, what’s going on through your eyes? Periscope it!
Posted in Blog, Top Apps
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