Twitter has launched Periscope, an app that rivals newly popular apps like Meerkat by letting users to instantly live-stream from a smartphone.
Once a user syncs their Twitter account with Periscope, they can view a list of curated live feeds on the app’s homepage and even replay streams that have since ended. Streams can be replayed up to 24 hours after ending, and broadcasters can opt-out of allowing users to view their stream after it’s over.
Periscope also includes the ability for viewers to tap on the stream to send hearts to the broadcaster, showing up as tiny floating emoticons on the stream’s lower-right corner for everyone watching the broadcast to see.
Though working in tandem with one another after being installed, the Twitter and Periscope experiences will stay separate from one another, according to Periscope co-founder Kayvon Beykpour.
“You won’t be able to launch Periscope directly from the Twitter app, at least not for a while. “We don’t think we need to start there,” Beykpour says. “We think this deserves to be a separate experience indefinitely.” Still, there’s a reason Twitter scooped up Periscope: Twitter is a mostly live experience, and so is its new broadcasting app. “We always thought that what we were building, if successful, could be a real-time visual pulse of what’s happening around the world,” Beykpour says. The vision for Twitter is much the same.
Watch this video from the Wall Street Journal demonstrating the new service below: