BBC World Service and The Why Factor asked just that and this is what they came up with. And no surprises in that they found it’s an opportunity to learn, to spark creativity, to experience – even for the briefest amount of time – how other people live.
Which got me thinking about Periscope. My new addiction (and from the looks of it, I’m in good company. Since I started this post Periscope announced they have 10 million users, and counting.)
For those of you who don’t know, it’s a live video streaming app. Which means that anyone with a smartphone, tablet etc can broadcast whatever, whenever and wherever they want to – as long as they have internet access. (You’ll be surprised where you can get internet access. I know I was.)
According to Periscope:
‘…. It may sound crazy, but we wanted to build the closest thing to teleportation. While there are many ways to discover events and places, we realized there is no better way to experience a place right now than through live video. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but live video can take you someplace and show you around.’
And the best news? They succeeded. My advice? Download it, and check it out for yourself. Or read on for a few more thoughts and recommendations from me.
Periscope is relatively new, it was only launched in March 2015 – is owned by Twitter, available for iOS and Android and it’s free. Hurrah!
Once you start following people, you can get notifications when they are broadcasting, as well as notifications of their recommendations of people to watch. And it doesn’t take long before you’ve built up a good number of people in different time zones.
And if you’re watching them live, then you can send them messages. And you can even send messages to other people that are watching and vice versa. And if you really like what you see, you can tap the screen and give hearts in a pre-assigned colour which also matches the colour of your profile photo. (Am I alone in feeling like I’ve pulled the short straw when I get the chocolate hearts? Boo to that.) The broadcaster collects the hearts and they often encourage you to give them more hearts, take screenshots and post on Twitter etc.
And for those of you who want to have a go at scoping, it’s also worth checking out kerryshearer.com. He’s been doing this sort of thing for years before Periscope, and is keen to share hints and tips with the world (including recommended tech).
There are still a number of bugs which Periscope needs to fix (screen freezes, comments not showing on replay etc), and no doubt, many more developments to come. It will be interesting to see how this app evolves because it is so new. But for now, enjoy discovering the world from wherever you have internet access.
(One last thing. The broadcasts are only saved for a maximum of 24 hours. So many savvy scopers have an account with www.katch.me which saves broadcasts forever. At least I think it’s forever. Couldn’t find any info to suggest otherwise.)
My next post will be my recommendations for scopers to check out. #Nice
It’s the Summer of Periscope. Will it ever be this exciting again?