Periscope is a live streaming social media app acquired by Twitter in 2015 that allows users to broadcast live video from their mobile devices. In its first year, Periscope saw over 200 million broadcasts and over 110 years of content watched daily. Strengths include notifications when people you follow broadcast, live commenting for interaction, and the ability to broadcast from anywhere globally. Weaknesses include the lack of an on-screen timer and comments fading quickly. Periscope is used by news organizations like CNN and provides an efficient way to broadcast events in real-time.

1. NEWS & PERISCOPE
Emily Becker

2. WHAT IS PERISCOPE?
• Purchased by Twitter in February 2015 and officially launched on March 26, 2015.
• Periscope is a social media app that streams live video and audio from your mobile device.
• You can “go live” anytime and anywhere, and you become your own broadcasting station.
• Anyone who joins your broadcast can see and hear your stream, like your broadcast, provide live interaction with
viewers, feedback after the broadcast, and replay the broadcast for up to 24 hours after that broadcast has
ended. Then it is removed from the app, the broadcasts stay on your page but can’t be replayed, you are able to
save them to your camera roll if you want.

3. ONE YEAR DOWN
• Over 200 million broadcasts
• Over 110 years watched everyday, the time watched represents the total amount of time spent watching live
broadcasts on Periscope.

4. STRENGTHS
• Notifications will alert you when someone you follow: starts a broadcast, shares another person’s live broadcast,
invites you to a private broadcast, or when someone you follow on Twitter broadcasts for the first time.
• Live commenting provides real-time interaction between the broadcaster and audience.
• The hearts that pop up when a viewer taps the screen during a broadcast lets the streamer know that the
audience likes what they are talking about.
• Broadcasts from anywhere on the globe can be watched.
• Gives the audience more authentic and accurate real-time viewing of an event.
• Provides different perspectives and vantage points of whatever is being broadcasted.
• Portrait and landscape shooting mode.

5. WEAKNESSES
• No on screen timer to see how long you have been broadcasting.
• Comments fade away after a few seconds.
• If a broadcast has a big audience, viewers that joined late won’t be able to comment.
• Broadcast only stays up for 24 hours.
• Sparks competition with other news platforms
• Potential threat of cyberbullying.

6. EXAMPLES OF PERISCOPE IS USED FOR
NEWS
• CNN

7. COMMENTS AND CRITIQUE
• I think Periscope is an efficient and beneficial social media app that can be used to broadcast a lot of different
things. Not only can journalists use it to their advantage, celebrities can use it to reach fans, anyone can use it to
live stream anything they are doing. I can see that there are definite strengths and weaknesses, but in this case, I
think the strengths outweigh the weaknesses. No social media platform is perfect, especially when the user is
trying to convey news. But I think that periscope is an easy and effective way of portraying news issues.