Periscope Annouces a New Feature to Compete with Facebook Live | Hacker News Reader

Periscope Annouces a New Feature to Compete with Facebook Live

technowize.com

37 pointslavasa11 comments

Much of the charm of Periscope is the ability to watch different people doing and saying random stuff.

I haven't yet watched a Facebook live video. Possibly this is because none of my Facebook "friends" has ever made a live video, or perhaps I don't sit on my Facebook news feed enough to notice if one of them did. Periscope, by contrast, shows you live videos on its default screen, and _nothing else_.

A lot of Periscope content is very disposable. The value lies in the live-ness of the videos. Replays can be interesting, but they are secondary. Live video is more "real", because it can't be edited or faked (at least not very easily, and it's impossible to fake live responses to viewers' comments).

If I could choose just one improvement to make to Periscope, it would be to give the user some control over the parameters of the algorithm that determines visibility of new videos on the main list, for example to give priority to specified hashtags. The current algorithm, whatever it is, tends to favour youth over age, probably as a function of the normal human reaction to physical attractiveness (many viewers will continue to watch a new video simply because they like looking at the broadcaster's face, and this will affect the algorithm's decision to highlight that video in the main list for other users of the app).

Facebook live has mostly been for approved accounts. So famous people and news organisations for example.

They used those accounts as a limited beta so to speak rather than releasing it to millions of people instantly. So that probably has to do with why it's slow in the uptake.

And yes the app interface leaves a lot to be desired. It really needs to have that completely overhauled.

Example - sort by distance, last created, most viewers, longest duration, etc

Also when you go into a broadcast and then jump out, the whole list refreshes including counts which makes it very hard to use.

Justin.tv should've never closed down

It was quite nice with functionality and steaming from your mobile

It could've continued to coexist with twitch

I used to watch murder mysteries, seinfeld, and shark tank on JTV.

Good times.

This a neat development, but as a relatively frequent Periscope user (~2 broadcasts a week, usually music or cooking related) I already have my app set up to save my video to my device upon completion. That way I can download it, toss it in a video editor, add Title/Credits text, maybe even add a different audio file (if recorded separately, which sometimes happens) and then save for the web. This gives me a bit of time to think about what I might want to use.

While useful to some, I'm not sure I'll be very into the functionality. I mean, I do tend to have things 'set up' rather than just doing a random broadcast. It's just that editing, to me, is still an important facet in content creation (where appropriate).

I wonder if they're using the MediaRecorder API, or if it's some custom solution.

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/01/mediarecor...

No they're probably just muxing the video stream to an MP4 or something on the server side while the broadcast is happening.

Interesting. Honestly forgot all about Periscope. I tried it out day one to mess around with my day to day stuff, and I really haven't heard anything about it since.

Facebook Live will decimate Periscope. They should have sold when they had a chance. Too little too late.

Periscope was acquired by Twitter.

"Twitter Confirms Periscope Acquisition, And Here’s How The Livestreaming App Works"

http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/13/how-periscope-works/

Amazing how Twitter squandered their many-month advantage.

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