Getting acquainted with social networks and apps: periscope up! Broadcasting via live streaming
| Published date | 02 May 2017 |
| Date | 02 May 2017 |
| Pages | 16-20 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-03-2017-0015 |
| Author | Katie Elson Anderson |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library technology,Library & information services |
Getting acquainted with social networks and
apps: periscope up! Broadcasting via
live streaming
Katie Elson Anderson
The tagline for the live broadcasting
app Periscope is “explore the world in
real time through someone else’s
eyes”[1] While this sentence could
describe any number of social media
apps that allow a follower to
experience events synchronously via
text and pictures, live broadcasting
applications such as Periscope and
Facebook Live provide viewers with
real-time experiences via video.
According to Pophal (2016), it is this
real-time interaction that makes lives
streaming so compelling because of
the fact that the live experience is
viewed as more authentic, especially
by younger generations. Watching a
video after the fact does not have the
same impact as witnessing it live via
another’s actual experience. This
interest in the spontaneous and
unfiltered views is growing. Malik
(2015) notes that traditional methods
of consuming videos has changed
with the ability of smartphones to
bring more interactivity and
immediacy. Evidence of this growth
in popularity is reflected in news
stories about live streaming events
and a marked increase of videos in
most Facebook feeds and Twitter
streams. Newspapers such as
Washington Post and news channels
such as PBS (Public Broadcasting
Service) are embracing the streaming,
both on Facebook Live and Periscope.
Mander (2016) points out the
potential of streaming in a report on
the trends of 2016, noting the interest
of young mobile users and their
preferences toward types of live
streaming broadcasts such as
concerts, news, education, etc.
Sharing videos of one’s experience
is not a new concept to social media
applications. YouTube has been giving
people a platform to create and share
videos since it began in 2005. Vine,
before it was shut down in late 2016,
was an extremely popular app where
users shared 6-s looping videos through
other social media platforms,
specifically Twitter, its parent company
(Rogers, 2016). Users could share 10-s
videos on Snapchat 10 on both Android
and IOS by early 2013 (Crook, 2013).
Instagram also added video in 2013
expanding on Vine and Snapchats time
limits to allow for 15 s (Warren, 2013).
The ability to share video was
quickly embraced by users of social
media applications and continues to be
a large portion of the content shared. It
was predicted in 2015 that over 80 per
cent of internet traffic would be in the
form of video by 2019 (Savage, 2015).
This trend seems to be on track, with
video making up a large portion of
shared content on social media. It is not
surprising that the next stage would
involve longer videos in real-time.
One of the first big social media
sharing sites to embrace live streaming
was Google⫹. Expanding on the
Google Hangout feature of Google⫹,
Google announced Hangouts on Air in
May of 2012 which allowed users to
live stream content on their Google⫹
stream, YouTube channel or website
(Hernandez, 2012). However, Google⫹
did not ever reach the popularity and
adoption that other social media
networks such as Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram did, and in the fall of 2016,
Hangouts on Air were migrated to
Google’s more successful platform
YouTube Live (O’Kane, 2016). While
select users have been able to live
stream video on YouTube Live since
2011, the ability to live stream videos
by all content creators was added in
2013 (Protalinski, 2013). It should be
noted however that despite YouTube
embracing live streaming early on,
mobile live streaming by YouTube
however is not yet available to all users
(Titlow, 2017).
Even though the ability to live stream
via a smartphone had been around for
some time, mobile live streaming hit
many radars in early 2015 when,
according to Tech Crunch, the livestream
went mainstream (Perez, 2015). The
mobile-streaming app Meerkat appeared
on the scene as the breakout star of the
South by Southwest (SXSW)
Conference. This Conference and music
festival has been known to be the
launching place for apps including
Twitter and FourSquare. Everyone was
not only talking about Meerkat but also
using it to stream their experiences at the
Conference (Newton, 2015). Meerkat
allowed smartphone users to stream live
video using the Twitter social graph,
relying on previously established
following–follower relationships and
embedding the videos into tweets.
Twitter actually ended up cutting
Meerkat off from its graph which may
have actually helped Meerkat’s
popularity. Despite its popularity and
success early in 2015, the founders have
moved on to other mobile app endeavors
and, in September 2016, Meerkat was
removed from the app store (Kumparak,
2016). Meerkat’s only real competition
during its glory months was Periscope,
which appeared in the app story at the
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 3 2017, pp. 16-20, © Emerald Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/LHTN-03-2017-001516
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