Speaker 1: Get in Text with Technology with tex staff Chrome hast
Speaker 1: Works dot com as Welcome to Text Stuff. I'm Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland and today and you're going to talk about how
Speaker 1: periscope works. And a few of you are actually watching
Speaker 1: this live, which means you get to see what I'm
Speaker 1: saying before this podcast goes live. So if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this on your little podcast tracker, just know you
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to see the magic as it was happening.
Speaker 1: But you can talk to the people who were there
Speaker 1: and they'll tell you the story anyway. Really, today's episode
Speaker 1: is about Periscope and another app called mere Cat, and
Speaker 1: to a wider extent, the trend towards live streaming in general.
Speaker 1: So live streaming has been around for a while. It's
Speaker 1: not that new um and it's been growing in popularity
Speaker 1: for quite some time, and in some circles it's kind
Speaker 1: of old news. There were a lot of early examples
Speaker 1: like you Stream and justin TV, which I've talked about
Speaker 1: before on Tech Stuff, and those allowed users the chance
Speaker 1: to broadcast using a simple setup of a computer, a microphone,
Speaker 1: a webcam and as long as you had a good
Speaker 1: Internet connection, you were good to go. Then came Twitch.
Speaker 1: Twitch is really I think we have to thank Twitch
Speaker 1: for truly bringing live streaming to a new level. It
Speaker 1: started off as kind of a spinoff of justin TV,
Speaker 1: but it went on to be so incredibly successful that
Speaker 1: it eclipsed Justin TV, got way bigger, and eventually it
Speaker 1: replaced it completely. Justin TV went away, Twitch stayed. Twitch
Speaker 1: is a service designed to allow gamers to stream their
Speaker 1: gaming activities live to an audience, and gamers can use
Speaker 1: various setups to broadcast not only the game they're playing,
Speaker 1: but a video of themselves as they play. It very
Speaker 1: popular service out there. At the same time, there were
Speaker 1: video calling services that became popular, stuff like Skype, FaceTime,
Speaker 1: Google Hangouts, all of these making it easier to use
Speaker 1: a mobile device to do a live video call with
Speaker 1: someone else. And you could do a live broadcast hangout
Speaker 1: from Google to stream through YouTube if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: But there wasn't really a streamlined way to use a
Speaker 1: mobile device to live stream content to a broad audience.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't easy. So back in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: there was a man named Cavan b Core who was
Speaker 1: traveling to Istanbul and at the time he was the
Speaker 1: general manager and senior executive of Blackboard Mobile. He had
Speaker 1: become a member of the senior executive team after his company,
Speaker 1: Terribly Clever Design, had been acquired, and his interest up
Speaker 1: to that point had been in developing apps that made
Speaker 1: it easy for students and faculty to access and use
Speaker 1: campus data. Also, around that time, Istanbul was not a
Speaker 1: terribly safe place to be. There were these escalating political protests.
Speaker 1: They were getting violent, they were going on in the city,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to know if these protests were happening
Speaker 1: in geographic regions close to where he was planning on
Speaker 1: staying when he traveled Istanbul, and he was having trouble
Speaker 1: finding that information online and news outlets. He said they
Speaker 1: moved too slowly, they were too general, they weren't specific enough.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be able to look in on very
Speaker 1: particular places within Istanbul, and he used Twitter to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on the situation in real time, but found
Speaker 1: himself wishing that there was some way he could view
Speaker 1: live video of the scene from there. Now you could
Speaker 1: watch recorded video after he'd been uploaded and processed, but
Speaker 1: by then it's it's pretty late. So after all of that,
Speaker 1: knowing that tons of people have smartphones, tons of people
Speaker 1: have the ability to shoot video and record video. Why
Speaker 1: not have a live streaming app that combines something like
Speaker 1: a video recording program with a video calling service and
Speaker 1: make it live streaming. So he would go on to
Speaker 1: partner with a guy named Joe Bernstein to create such
Speaker 1: an app. Now, they you that it would need to
Speaker 1: give people the opportunity to turn a phone into a
Speaker 1: camera and broadcast that live across the Internet. They also
Speaker 1: saw the need to make the experience interactive rather than
Speaker 1: a simple stream to viewer experience. So they also knew
Speaker 1: that the experience needed to be interactive and not just
Speaker 1: a simple stream to viewer experience. So for example, I'm
Speaker 1: streaming right now on Periscope as I record this, and
Speaker 1: I can look on my app and see responses. I
Speaker 1: can see people chatting about what's happening. I can see
Speaker 1: people giving me hearts if they enjoy it, and as
Speaker 1: as people are saying it's awesome and how to back
Speaker 1: you ps shaggy. So anyway, these two envision and app
Speaker 1: that would allow people to share anything from an historic
Speaker 1: event unfolding in real time to just simple everyday activities
Speaker 1: of their daily lives. They also wanted to include features
Speaker 1: that would allow viewers to interact in some way by
Speaker 1: giving feedback or questions, or just generally express love for
Speaker 1: what's going on. So the two founded Periscope in February
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen. And what's the first thing you do
Speaker 1: when you've found a new internet startup company, That's right,
Speaker 1: you beg for money. They sought a round of seed
Speaker 1: investment from Angel Investors, which included Scott Belski of Adobe,
Speaker 1: and they raised a few million bucks to start off. Now.
Speaker 1: Their pitch included describing periscope as being similar to teleporting
Speaker 1: to a distant location to see what is going on
Speaker 1: at that exact moment, and it held a little bit
Speaker 1: more of a exciting prospect than just watching a prerecorded video.
Speaker 1: You could actually be their live while it's happening. Now.
Speaker 1: In lateen they met with Jessica ver Really, the director
Speaker 1: of corporate Development and Strategy for Twitter, and for Really
Speaker 1: was impressed and introduced them to Twitter CEO Dick Costolo
Speaker 1: and Twitter co founder Jack Dorsey, who were in turn
Speaker 1: also impressed. So this goes on. They end up having
Speaker 1: a great conversation and before long, Twitter makes an offer
Speaker 1: to buy Periscope to acquire the company, and apparently some
Speaker 1: other entities were also interested in buying Periscope, so that
Speaker 1: helped push up the price. The founder said that it
Speaker 1: was a fortuitous timing. The amount itself was not made public,
Speaker 1: but a lot of early reports said it was somewhere
Speaker 1: in between seventy and a hundred million dollars, so not
Speaker 1: chump change. Periscope accepted Twitter's offer and the company was
Speaker 1: acquired in January two thousand fifteen. But Twitter kept it
Speaker 1: quiet for a little bit longer for reasons I will
Speaker 1: get into in a moment. Let's just say it was
Speaker 1: a gotcha kind of approach. See net reported that according
Speaker 1: to a regulatory filing, Twitter had spent eighty six point
Speaker 1: six million dollars total on two acquisitions. That was Periscope
Speaker 1: as acquisition number one, and a social media startup company
Speaker 1: called Niche or Niche if you prefer, and people a
Speaker 1: Niche said the purchase was a about thirty million dollars
Speaker 1: for their company, so that I put Periscope in around
Speaker 1: fifty six million dollars or so, so less than what
Speaker 1: some reports were saying. And honestly, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different accounts for this, and it hasn't been made
Speaker 1: completely public, so somewhere between fifty six million dollars and
Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars. That's a small margin of error, right. Anyway,
Speaker 1: another live streaming app was getting a lot of buzz
Speaker 1: right around spring of this year called mere Cat. So
Speaker 1: mere Cat launched in late February two fifteen, and it
Speaker 1: was built by a group called Life on Air Incorporated.
Speaker 1: That was a team headed by Ben Ruben, and mere
Speaker 1: Cat was leveraging Twitter's social graphs, so you could sign
Speaker 1: into mere Cat through Twitter and access your followers. That way,
Speaker 1: followers could get alerts whenever you were going live on Merecat,
Speaker 1: they could comment on videos, but those videos, those comments
Speaker 1: were going through Twitter, so actually the comments on Mercat
Speaker 1: would get published onto Twitter to everybody. Not everyone was
Speaker 1: crazy about that. Mere Cat made a particularly big splash
Speaker 1: at a little event called south By Southwest, And if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with south By Southwest, it's a gigantic
Speaker 1: festival that takes place in Austin. It incorporates music and
Speaker 1: movies and what they call interactive or internet based uh
Speaker 1: stuffed lost startup companies end up using south By Southwest
Speaker 1: is a place to either launch a new product or
Speaker 1: to announce new features to existing products. It's really a
Speaker 1: place if you aren't going to interactive, It's really a
Speaker 1: place for you to network, literally, to meet other people
Speaker 1: and convince them that your stuff is the important stuff
Speaker 1: and that people should really pay attention to you. It's
Speaker 1: if you can get people on board with your product
Speaker 1: of south by Southwest that usually spills over to a
Speaker 1: lot of attention immediately following it. So mere Cat raised
Speaker 1: about twelve million dollars in March two thousand fifteen. But
Speaker 1: that same month, that's when Twitter announced that it had
Speaker 1: purchased Periscope. It had done that back in January, but
Speaker 1: kept it quiet until March, and I think a big
Speaker 1: reason for it was to steal a lot of thunder
Speaker 1: from meercat. Twitter also did something else that some people
Speaker 1: thought was kind of dirty pool. Twitter cut the social
Speaker 1: graphic access off of mere Cat. So mere Cat had
Speaker 1: been depending upon Twitter to use that that platform to
Speaker 1: leverage the value of their service, and now Twitter saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna come out with our own now,
Speaker 1: so you don't get to do that, And that caused
Speaker 1: a bit of a stir so. Merecat and Periscope do
Speaker 1: similar things. They both allow users to live stream from
Speaker 1: their mobile devices, and both allow followers to watch and
Speaker 1: comment on them. But mere cats comments at the time
Speaker 1: all went through Twitter, so some people would be reluctant
Speaker 1: to comment on a video as it's happening because they
Speaker 1: know that the entire world could see the messages. And
Speaker 1: mere cats broadcasts, at least first, were truly live, so
Speaker 1: if you missed it, they were gone. You had no
Speaker 1: opportunity to see that stuff. You had to be there. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: you can use some additional tools to expand Mercat's features
Speaker 1: so that you can watch videos after they've happened, or
Speaker 1: you can comment outside of Twitter. You can actually comment
Speaker 1: within merecat itself, but at the time that was not
Speaker 1: the case. Periscope when it launched, had a few more
Speaker 1: bells and whistles. So let's talk about what the app
Speaker 1: looks like and what it's features are. So this is
Speaker 1: gonna be really boring to the people who are watching
Speaker 1: right now because you already know you're doing it. But
Speaker 1: for everybody else, here's what periscope is all about. Oh
Speaker 1: and by the way, tech Crunch really dissed Meercat. When
Speaker 1: it came out, tech Crunch called it a rough shot
Speaker 1: app built in ten days ouch uh. In fact, it
Speaker 1: took about eight weeks according to Ruben to build it,
Speaker 1: but still and it took years of developed development beyond that.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about periscope, what it looks like and
Speaker 1: the features it has. First. Obviously, the most important thing
Speaker 1: is you can live stream from your mobile device. You
Speaker 1: can do this to the general public like I am
Speaker 1: doing right now. Anyone who has a link to that
Speaker 1: periscope can see what you are doing. Or you can
Speaker 1: broadcast to just your followers or a subset of your followers.
Speaker 1: Viewers can watch live streams on computers, but if they
Speaker 1: do that, they can only be passive viewers. There's no
Speaker 1: interactivity built into the browser version of periscope right now.
Speaker 1: If you want that interactivity, you have to download the
Speaker 1: app to your smartphone, and if you watch a live
Speaker 1: stream through the periscope app, you can interact by chatting
Speaker 1: or you tap the screen and that sends hearts. Now
Speaker 1: the hearts show up on screen. Can anyone Can anyone
Speaker 1: send me some hearts while I talk about this. That
Speaker 1: makes me feel better. But the hearts show up on
Speaker 1: screen and indicate that people are enjoying what they see.
Speaker 1: Hearts have also come into play in rankings, so accounts
Speaker 1: that get a lot of hearts get more visibility in
Speaker 1: the periscope app. Um when you start looking for periscopes
Speaker 1: to watch, the ones that accumulate a lot of hearts
Speaker 1: are the ones that go to the top of those lists.
Speaker 1: I am so far behind the leaders in this space
Speaker 1: that unless you just obsessively tapped the screen every time
Speaker 1: I go on periscope, I won't ever show up on
Speaker 1: that list, which is okay. And unlike Merecat, the chatting
Speaker 1: doesn't go to Twitter. All of that chat remains in
Speaker 1: the periscope app, so you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: broadcasting your questions or comments to the whole world. It's
Speaker 1: just the people who are watching. Although if you do
Speaker 1: watch the video stream after it goes offline, then you
Speaker 1: still have that issue. Oh and I see that I'm
Speaker 1: stuttering a bit online, so that's fun. Once a stream
Speaker 1: is done, it stays available for twenty four hours before disappearing,
Speaker 1: so you can save a stream to your mobile device
Speaker 1: if you have enough storage on your device to do that,
Speaker 1: and then you can upload it to YouTube or some
Speaker 1: other service if you wanted to. Now, if you haven't
Speaker 1: download the Periscope app, you probably aren't really aware of
Speaker 1: how it looks or or you know what it looks
Speaker 1: like rather or how it works. First, you have to
Speaker 1: download the app and install it, obviously, that's your first step.
Speaker 1: And then you have to sign into Periscope. You can
Speaker 1: do that either by using your Twitter handle and password
Speaker 1: or through your phone number. So if you don't have Twitter,
Speaker 1: you don't. You don't have to have it to use Periscope.
Speaker 1: It's just a lot of functionality will be taken out
Speaker 1: if you don't have Twitter. So I'm going to concentrate
Speaker 1: on the Android version because I own an Android phone,
Speaker 1: so that's what I'll be talking about. But the iOS
Speaker 1: one is very similar. It's the same features. I just
Speaker 1: can't necessarily say the layout is exactly the same. They
Speaker 1: may be slightly different. But on the Android version, you've
Speaker 1: got three icons at the top left of the screen
Speaker 1: when you log in. One lists any live streams from
Speaker 1: the folks you follow on Periscope. It also lists any
Speaker 1: streams from the past twenty four hours that came from
Speaker 1: those accounts, including your own. Then there's a glob BiCon
Speaker 1: that let that lists the live streams from around the
Speaker 1: world that you might be interested in. And then there's
Speaker 1: a little cluster of people icon that lists the people
Speaker 1: you follow on Twitter who are also on Periscope, so
Speaker 1: you can follow them on para Scope as well, assuming
Speaker 1: you logged into Periscope through Twitter, that is. And under
Speaker 1: that list of the folks you know is a list
Speaker 1: of the most loved accounts, and those are the accounts
Speaker 1: that have accumulated the most hearts. That's the list I'm
Speaker 1: never ever going to be on. Now. In the upper
Speaker 1: right corner of the people page is a link to
Speaker 1: your accounts, so you can click on that and see
Speaker 1: how you stack up, like how many people do you follow,
Speaker 1: how many people follow you? How many hearts have you accumulated?
Speaker 1: As of this recording right now, this is my third
Speaker 1: periscope broadcast I've ever done, and before I started recording,
Speaker 1: I had around a hundred fifty followers and just over
Speaker 1: eight hundred hearts, So we'll see how many I have
Speaker 1: at the end. Probably not that many more, but that's
Speaker 1: that that tells you I'm at eight hundred. The top
Speaker 1: periscopers have millions and millions of hearts, so I'm not
Speaker 1: in that league. There's also a camera icon on the
Speaker 1: screen and that initiates the live stream, so if you
Speaker 1: touch that icon, it'll prompt you to make a few
Speaker 1: more choices. One thing is you can set the live
Speaker 1: stream to either public or private. A private livestream can
Speaker 1: go out to all your followers or just specific people
Speaker 1: you designate. So I could do a Periscope livestream to
Speaker 1: a single person if I wanted to. Uh, it won't
Speaker 1: all show up to the public. They won't be able
Speaker 1: to view that stream. At least the video stream won't
Speaker 1: show up to the public. There was a problem in
Speaker 1: Periscope's early design that involved Twitter and private video titles.
Speaker 1: So if the Twitter option was on and you created
Speaker 1: a private event, the title of the stream would get
Speaker 1: tweeted out. Only the people you authorized would actually be
Speaker 1: able to watch the stream, but the title went to everyone.
Speaker 1: So if you made a title that was oh, raunchy,
Speaker 1: or you know, you were making an insold or something
Speaker 1: and you thought it was funny because only the people
Speaker 1: who are following you were going to see it, here's
Speaker 1: the problem. It would go out on your Twitter feed.
Speaker 1: If you had that at debated, and everyone would see
Speaker 1: the title. They couldn't see the video, but they would
Speaker 1: know what you were talking about, so that was an issue.
Speaker 1: If your periscope account is linked to Twitter, you can
Speaker 1: choose to tweet out the live stream to your followers,
Speaker 1: which I did at the beginning of this stream. And
Speaker 1: you also need to give your stream a name, so
Speaker 1: you have to title it. My first pair of scope
Speaker 1: was I think called Walking Tibbalt. Tibled, by the way,
Speaker 1: is the name of my puppy dog, and he is
Speaker 1: a puppy and I think that's where seven hundred of
Speaker 1: the eight hundred hearts I have came from. So those
Speaker 1: hearts really don't belong to me. They belonged to Tibalt,
Speaker 1: and he earned them, so I'm not upset. Once you're ready,
Speaker 1: you hit the start broadcasting button and you go. That's it.
Speaker 1: It's streaming. People who follow you on Periscope will get
Speaker 1: a notification if they have push notifications turned on that
Speaker 1: you are live, and if you send a message through Twitter,
Speaker 1: that will get more folks following you and watching you.
Speaker 1: Now that also means you'll get notifications when the people
Speaker 1: you follow go live as well. Those notifications will pop
Speaker 1: up on your mobile device. You can open the up
Speaker 1: and watch and interact at that point. And Periscope can
Speaker 1: use both the forward facing and rear facing cameras on
Speaker 1: a mobile device. You can switch between the two either
Speaker 1: by double tapping on the screen, or you can swipe down,
Speaker 1: which pulls up some settings and you can change it there.
Speaker 1: This lets you show people your point of view or
Speaker 1: pull it back so you can have a camera face
Speaker 1: focused on your face so you can address the camera directly.
Speaker 1: Some other things to keep in mind when you're using periscope.
Speaker 1: If you have the location data on your of your
Speaker 1: phone turned on and you activate that on periscope, it
Speaker 1: will show where you are to people who are viewing
Speaker 1: the stream. This can be a privacy concern to In fact,
Speaker 1: I think originally it was set on by default. Now
Speaker 1: it's set off, at least on mine by default, so
Speaker 1: if I want to, I can choose that and let
Speaker 1: people know where I am. But some people have pointed
Speaker 1: out this could be a privacy concern. If you were
Speaker 1: to broadcast where you were, then that could be a
Speaker 1: safety issue depending upon who you are and who's watching,
Speaker 1: especially if you're broadcasting from your home and you don't
Speaker 1: generally make that information publicly available, it could be a
Speaker 1: big issue. Some other things to keep in mind when
Speaker 1: using periscope. If you have the location data on your
Speaker 1: phone turned on and uh and you don't want people
Speaker 1: to know exactly where you are, you should switch that off.
Speaker 1: You should also keep in mind that maybe the neighbors
Speaker 1: around you don't want the world to know where they live,
Speaker 1: so just courtesy is something that you have to keep
Speaker 1: in mind. Also, there is a limit on how many
Speaker 1: people can chat on a stream. Not that I'm ever
Speaker 1: going to hit that, but once that limit is reached,
Speaker 1: anyone else trying to chat will see that they can't
Speaker 1: say anything they're blocked from chatting, And that's to make
Speaker 1: sure that the video isn't completely drowned out by chat
Speaker 1: messages for these super popular feeds, the ones that get
Speaker 1: millions of hearts in a particular stream. Some other features
Speaker 1: that are useful in periscope include the ability to block
Speaker 1: someone in chat, which is really helpful if you find
Speaker 1: someone to be particularly annoying, and you can also block
Speaker 1: someone in general so that they won't to you when
Speaker 1: you go live from that point forward. Also important if
Speaker 1: someone's trolling you. Unfortunately, there are a lot of female
Speaker 1: users who have loved the functionality of periscope but have
Speaker 1: received some terrible harassment, and it's a good thing that
Speaker 1: that feature exists so that they can at least address
Speaker 1: that themselves. It's unfortunate that it happens, uh, And I
Speaker 1: certainly hope that all of my tech stuff fans are
Speaker 1: the type who would never do that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure you're not. You always are awesome to me.
Speaker 1: So how does periscope work? We've got the what it does,
Speaker 1: but how does it work? Well? Not everything has been revealed,
Speaker 1: but I imagine that it's relying upon a specific protocol.
Speaker 1: It's called h t t P Live Streaming, also known
Speaker 1: as h l S. It's kind of a real time
Speaker 1: communications protocol and that allows for the transmission of video streams. UH.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, it works by using a very common approach.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's your basic web server approach. You've got
Speaker 1: a web server that's designed to distribute video content. So
Speaker 1: you start broadcasting from your mobile device. The data that
Speaker 1: you are creating goes out over the network, whether that's
Speaker 1: a cellular network or a WiFi network, and then travels
Speaker 1: to the web server, the periscope web server. The web
Speaker 1: server then encodes the stream, probably in an h dot
Speaker 1: to six four format for the video, and then some
Speaker 1: standard file format for the audio MP three or a
Speaker 1: C three something like that that gets encapsulated by the
Speaker 1: impact to transport stream to be carried out to periscope viewers.
Speaker 1: And the viewers are using either the app or the
Speaker 1: browser interface to watch the streams, and these are the
Speaker 1: clients in the basic classic server client relationship. You probably
Speaker 1: have heard that phrase a thousand times to talk about
Speaker 1: the Internet. So the client in this case would either
Speaker 1: be the browser or the up on your smartphone, and
Speaker 1: typically the client has the resources necessary to assemble the
Speaker 1: broadcast data those bits that are coming into the device
Speaker 1: into a viewable flow of video. So on mobile devices
Speaker 1: that would be the app on your laptop, that would
Speaker 1: be a browser or desktop. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: just said laptop. I guess they just assume people don't
Speaker 1: use desktops anymore. Sorry, gamers, I love you. I have
Speaker 1: a desktop at home too. As the app becomes more popular,
Speaker 1: scalability becomes an issue. So as the system gets used
Speaker 1: more heavily, it can dynamically adjust the quality of the
Speaker 1: transmitted video. So, in other words, if a lot of
Speaker 1: people are periscoping from a particular location at a time
Speaker 1: where a lot of people are are loading up the service,
Speaker 1: the quality of the video can be downgraded to adjust
Speaker 1: for that. But obviously that only works for a little
Speaker 1: while before people start getting upset at the lower quality.
Speaker 1: So you definitely want to be able to scale up
Speaker 1: the operation as it gets more popular, uh, and that
Speaker 1: could be an issue. Periscope itself is incredibly popular. After
Speaker 1: ten days of launch, they had hit a million users,
Speaker 1: so very popular service. Now I'm gonna wrap this up
Speaker 1: pretty quickly to talk about how periscope has become, uh,
Speaker 1: this big popular thing and some of the concerns people
Speaker 1: have had so already mentioned. It got really popular really
Speaker 1: fast and continues to grow. Second, a lot of that
Speaker 1: growth has been fueled by people in the public eye
Speaker 1: using it to connect with fans or with an audience.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking like legit famous people, so uh, they're
Speaker 1: they're using it in a way to show behind the
Speaker 1: scenes on all sorts of operations, sometimes without clearing it
Speaker 1: with other people first. So if you're an actor and
Speaker 1: you're in a movie or a TV series, and you
Speaker 1: use periscope because you think it's a great way to
Speaker 1: connect with your fan base. That might be true, but
Speaker 1: you also might be broadcasting stuff that the studio would
Speaker 1: prefer you not to show the entire world. Old, I
Speaker 1: appreciate it, but the studio might not same thing with
Speaker 1: writers or really anyone who deals with any you know,
Speaker 1: stuff that could be sensitive material. For instance here and
Speaker 1: how stuff works. I'm I'm since I'm periscoping right now.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure that everyone I came into
Speaker 1: contact with knew I was periscoping, so that they would
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to put on their best face. So
Speaker 1: we don't get any moments of someone having a maybe
Speaker 1: a moment they don't want broadcast to the entire world.
Speaker 1: So it's it's actually requiring us to think about being
Speaker 1: courteous online. And you don't have to be famous to
Speaker 1: get a following on periscope, or at least you don't
Speaker 1: have to start off being famous to get a following.
Speaker 1: You could get a big following and become famous that way.
Speaker 1: A couple of people have actually already and it's not
Speaker 1: even that old of an app. Some people are even
Speaker 1: using it to create live entertainment events. So they're making
Speaker 1: a like almost like a live television show, complete with
Speaker 1: effects and different characters. And it's really incredible to think,
Speaker 1: like it's like the old days of live radio and
Speaker 1: live TV. Uh there's something really special about being present
Speaker 1: when something is happening for real, like when it's happening
Speaker 1: at that time. And uh, I really love That's my
Speaker 1: favorite one of my favorite things about live theater, and
Speaker 1: now it's one of my favorite things about this live streaming.
Speaker 1: But there is this big concern about privacy, and it's
Speaker 1: not just about the location data. It's also about those
Speaker 1: people around you who may not want their faces or
Speaker 1: voices broadcast to the general public. So personally, what I've
Speaker 1: I've taken upon myself is when I'm walking through a neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I the second live stream I ever did was my
Speaker 1: walk to work, So if you cut to watch that, boy,
Speaker 1: it was riveting. And when I would walk through a
Speaker 1: public space like a little area of Atlanta called Little
Speaker 1: Five Points, super funky neighborhood. When I was walking through that,
Speaker 1: I had the camera facing forward um as in a
Speaker 1: well rear facing camera really because it was the view
Speaker 1: I had, so you could see the streets, but then
Speaker 1: I would turn down the neighborhood and I would reverse
Speaker 1: the camera view to be on me to protect the
Speaker 1: privacy of the neighbors. That's generally what I was doing,
Speaker 1: just as you know, thoughtfulness for them. I hope that
Speaker 1: that becomes a regular thing for most people. So if
Speaker 1: I'm in a public space, I'll probably switch the camera
Speaker 1: to reflect my view of the world. Uh. And if
Speaker 1: I'm in a space it's not as public, I would
Speaker 1: have it on me instead. There's also a big concern
Speaker 1: about piracy. So you probably heard about some of these events. Um,
Speaker 1: the Periscope CEO has said that periscope is a pretty
Speaker 1: terrible tool for piracy because you're getting standard definition video
Speaker 1: and a little bitty screen. Uh, it's forced in portrait mode.
Speaker 1: You can't do it in landscape. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: put the phone sideways in landscape, but if you do that,
Speaker 1: then everyone else has to turn their device sideways. Anyone
Speaker 1: watching on the Internet has to, like through a brows
Speaker 1: has to turn their head. Uh, and all the chat
Speaker 1: and hearts will come out sideways too, So not ideal. Uh. Also,
Speaker 1: you you know, you can't really do that according to
Speaker 1: the terms of service on periscope, the broadcast of any
Speaker 1: material that's under copyright is against the term of service
Speaker 1: and you can be banned as a result of doing that.
Speaker 1: So not a good idea to do that. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: not a great experience. But there have been some big
Speaker 1: televised events that have been broadcast over a periscope that
Speaker 1: kind of raised this question. Big one being the and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you guys have figured this one out already,
Speaker 1: the season five premiere of Game of Thrones, because of
Speaker 1: course it was Game of Thrones, being an incredibly piratable material.
Speaker 1: Everyone loves to talk about how it's been pirated so
Speaker 1: many different times. Um, it happened on the season five premiere.
Speaker 1: It also happened during the Floyd Mayweather fight that was
Speaker 1: a huge deal where something like ninety different periscope streams
Speaker 1: were going out, but many of them were issued takedown notices,
Speaker 1: and of the ones that were not, they ended before
Speaker 1: the fight did, possibly because of hearing about the takedown
Speaker 1: notices that we're going out to other people. So my
Speaker 1: question for you guys wrapping this up is what do
Speaker 1: you think about live streaming in general? Do you see
Speaker 1: this as being a new form of entertainment and information,
Speaker 1: a new way of sharing with friends and family. Or
Speaker 1: is it just the top of egotistical, self centered obsession,
Speaker 1: like the kind I have in my heart. Do you
Speaker 1: feel that way or do you think that this is
Speaker 1: something that's really awesome and you look forward to using it,
Speaker 1: either as just a passive viewer or as maybe a
Speaker 1: broadcaster yourself. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. I would
Speaker 1: love to hear them, so if you want to share
Speaker 1: them with me and you're not on the periscope stream
Speaker 1: right now, the best way to do it is to
Speaker 1: send me an email hell and that address is text
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook. I hang
Speaker 1: out at both of those places. The handle you should
Speaker 1: use is tech stuff hs W and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. For more on this and
Speaker 1: battens another topping a staff works dot com