Twitter has struggled to stay relevant even with the huge number of people using its service. The company has been trying to come up with new products and services, all of which have been great, but have failed to capture people’s attention. This may or may not change with its latest products, Periscope.
Periscope is an app that allows you to broadcast live using your Smartphone. Periscope was acquired by Twitter a while back and brings some serious competition to the sector dominated by Meerkat. So what is Meerkat? If you are like me, you have probably never heard about Meerkat until today. In short, Meerkat is another live-streaming app that has not been around for that long. The app was made available to the public this month so don’t feel bad for not knowing it.
Read: Twitter Is Rolling out Group Messaging and Video Support for Its Android and iOS Apps
Back to Twitter’s Periscope, it is more like Meerkat with a few extra features. The app is only available on iOS users in the US but there are plans to bring it to other platforms and to users outside the US. When this will happen is still unknown.
With Periscope, you can stream your broadcasts live to people using the app and also those on Twitter. You also have the option of making your broadcasts public or just share them with a few people. Using the app, you will be able to browse live or recent broadcasts that you can watch if you wish to do so.
Twitter is really interested in video sharing platforms as it also owns Vine, a popular video sharing platform that focuses on short videos.
Will Periscope be successful? Yes it will mostly in markets where video sharing is already big. In markets such as Kenya, it may just be used by a few people to share live events or ‘breaking news’ kind of stories. Besides that, the app will not be as successful here.