Periscope_icon-100x100Just a few days after Meerkat made a ton of noise at SXSW with their new live streaming video app, twitter released their own version – Periscope.

I started my first live stream and within a few seconds I had a dozen people following the test.

I have uploaded all four test videos to Youtube (Test 1, Test 2, Test 3, Test 4)

I was immediately struck by how much better the video was in terms of lag.  It was super smooth.  I love the feedback method of tapping the screen to send a flurry of hearts fluttering on the lower-right portion of the screen.

A couple of things still have me confused a tad:

  • You are supposed to be able to alert your twitter followers when you start a live stream, but I tried it twice and it never appeared on my timeline.
  • The location sharing is downright creepy in its accuracy.  You can zoom into the little mini map to pinpoint the exact location you where are streaming. (A big thank you to @ericsalinas for pointing that one out)
  • The Periscope app gets access to your twitter account as read-only while Meerkat has read and write.  I would think that an app owned by twitter would have an API configured to post about your broadcast.
  • The chat function only publishes Periscope, making it less likely to draw in Twitter users
  • The streams are interrupted by a notifications overlay promoting other streams – that is a bit annoying.
  • The chats also do not show up in the recorded stream so the ‘conversation’ aspect ends up looking odd when you have someone responding to questions without seeing that side of teh conversation.  (This only applies to the saved stream viewed later.)

I can see some great uses for my clients:

  • I have a florist client (floralrenaustin.com) that is always at gorgeous galas/events/wedding.  He could add a live video stream to much better show his artistry that photos ever could.
  • When covering live sports events (www.lonestargridiron.com) you could stream a live feed to fans (Now if they just had a way to embed a player on a website hmmm…)
  • LIVE news coverage
  • Behind the scenes
  • Seminars
  • Trainings
  • Remote team communication

I think Periscope is the current leader in the live streaming twitter app battle and I can’t wait to see further developments.

Aside from the poor integration with Twitter, this is a wonderful app.  I expect the connection with Twitter will get better quickly.

by Chris Doelle