Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff, a production from I heart radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I heart radio,
Speaker 1: and how the Tech Are you? It is a Friday.
Speaker 1: It's time for a classic episode. This episode is called
Speaker 1: how periscope works. That's how you know it's a classic,
Speaker 1: because it don't work no more. But back on August
Speaker 1: two fifteen, when this episode originally aired, it did work
Speaker 1: in a manner of fashion, and so let's dial back
Speaker 1: the clock and remember a periscope in this episode. How
Speaker 1: periscope works. So live streaming has been around for a while.
Speaker 1: It's not that new um and it's been growing in
Speaker 1: popularity for quite some time, and in some circles it's
Speaker 1: kind 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 Cavin 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
Speaker 1: city and he wanted to know if these protests were
Speaker 1: happening in geographic regions close to where he was planning
Speaker 1: on staying when he traveled Istanbul. And he was having
Speaker 1: trouble finding that information online and news outlets. He said
Speaker 1: they moved too slowly, they were too general, they weren't
Speaker 1: specific enough. He wanted to be able to look in
Speaker 1: on very particular places within Istanbul and he used twitter
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on the situation in real time,
Speaker 1: but found himself wishing that there was some way he
Speaker 1: could view live video of the scene from there. Now
Speaker 1: you could watch recorded video after he'd been uploaded and processed,
Speaker 1: but by then it's it's pretty late. So after all
Speaker 1: of that, knowing that tons of people have smartphones, tons
Speaker 1: of people have the ability to shoot video and record video,
Speaker 1: why not have a live streaming app that combines something
Speaker 1: like a video recording program with a video calling service
Speaker 1: and make it live streaming. So he would go on
Speaker 1: to partner with a guy named Joe Bernstein to create
Speaker 1: such an APP. Now they knew that it would need
Speaker 1: to give people the opportunity to turn a phone into
Speaker 1: a camera and broadcasts that live across the Internet. They
Speaker 1: also saw the need to make the experience interactive rather
Speaker 1: than a simple stream to viewer experience. So they also
Speaker 1: knew that the experience needed to be interactive and not
Speaker 1: just a simple stream to viewer experience. So, for example,
Speaker 1: I'm streaming right now on periscope as I record this,
Speaker 1: and I can look on my app and see responses.
Speaker 1: I can see people chatting about what's happening, I can
Speaker 1: see people giving me hearts if they enjoy it, and
Speaker 1: as as people are saying it's awesome and howdy back
Speaker 1: you PS shaggy. So anyway, these two envisioned 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 expressing 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 there 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 make 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 five and a hundred million dollars, so
Speaker 1: not chump change. Periscope accepted twitter's offer and the company
Speaker 1: was acquired in January two thou fifteen. But twitter kept
Speaker 1: it quiet for a little bit longer for reasons I
Speaker 1: will get into in a moment. Let's just say it
Speaker 1: was a Gotcha kind of approach. See Net reported that,
Speaker 1: according to a regulatory filing, twitter had spent eighty six
Speaker 1: point six million dollars total on two acquisitions. That was
Speaker 1: periscope as acquisition number one, and a social media startup
Speaker 1: company called Niche, or niche if you prefer, and people
Speaker 1: in Niche said the purchase was about thirty million dollars
Speaker 1: for their company. So that had 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. Merket made a particularly big splash at
Speaker 1: a little event called South by southwest, and if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with south by southwest, it's a gigantic festival
Speaker 1: that takes place in Austin. It incorporates music and movies
Speaker 1: and what they call interactive or Internet based UH, stuffed
Speaker 1: lost startup companies end up using south by southwest is
Speaker 1: a place to either launch a new product or to
Speaker 1: announce new features to existing products. It's really a place
Speaker 1: if you aren't going to interactive. It's really a place
Speaker 1: for you to network, literally, to meet other people and
Speaker 1: convince them that your stuff is the important stuff and
Speaker 1: that people should really pay attention to you. It's if
Speaker 1: you can get people on board with your product of
Speaker 1: south by southwest that usually spills over to a lot
Speaker 1: of attention immediately following it. We'll be back soon with
Speaker 1: a little bit more about how periscope works after these messages.
Speaker 1: So mere cat raised about twelve million dollars in March,
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen. But that same month, that's when twitter
Speaker 1: announced that it had purchased periscope and had done that
Speaker 1: back in January but kept it quiet until March, and
Speaker 1: I think a big reason for it was to steal
Speaker 1: a lot of thunder from mere cat. Twitter also did
Speaker 1: something else that some people thought was kind of dirty.
Speaker 1: Pool twitter cut the social graphic access off of mere cat.
Speaker 1: So mere cat had been depending upon twitter to use
Speaker 1: that that platform to leverage the value of their service,
Speaker 1: and now twitter saying, yeah, you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: come out with our own now so you don't get
Speaker 1: to do that, and that caused a bit of a stir.
Speaker 1: So mere cat and periscope do similar things. They both
Speaker 1: allow users to live stream from their mobile devices and
Speaker 1: both allow followers to watch and comment on them. But
Speaker 1: mere cats comments at the time all went through twitter.
Speaker 1: So some people would be reluctant to comment on a
Speaker 1: video as it's happening because they know that the entire
Speaker 1: world could see the messages. And mere cats broadcasts, at
Speaker 1: least at first, were truly live. So if you missed it,
Speaker 1: they were gone. You had no opportunity to see that stuff.
Speaker 1: You had to be there. Uh. Now you can use
Speaker 1: some additional tools to expand mercats features so that you
Speaker 1: can watch videos after they've happened, or you can comment
Speaker 1: outside of twitter. You can actually comment within mere cat itself,
Speaker 1: but at the time that was not the case. Periscope,
Speaker 1: when it launched, had a few more bells and whistles.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what the APP looks like and
Speaker 1: what it's features are. So this is gonna be really
Speaker 1: boring to the people who are watching right now because
Speaker 1: you already know you're doing it, but for everybody else,
Speaker 1: here's what periscope is all about. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 1: tech crunch really dissed mere cat when it came out,
Speaker 1: tech crunch called it a rough shot APP built in
Speaker 1: ten days. Ouch H in fact it took about eight weeks,
Speaker 1: according to Ruben told it, but still, and it took
Speaker 1: years of developed development beyond that. So let's talk about periscope,
Speaker 1: what it looks like and the features it has. First,
Speaker 1: obviously the most important thing is you can live stream
Speaker 1: from your mobile device. You can do this to the
Speaker 1: general public, like I am doing right now. Anyone who
Speaker 1: has a link to that periscope can see what you
Speaker 1: are doing, or you can broadcast to just your followers
Speaker 1: or a subset of your followers. Viewers can watch live
Speaker 1: streams on computers, but if they do that they can
Speaker 1: only be passive viewers. There's no interactivity built into the
Speaker 1: browser version of periscope right now. If you want that
Speaker 1: interactivity you have to download the APP to your smartphone
Speaker 1: and if you watch a live stream through the periscope APP,
Speaker 1: you can interact by chatting or you tap the screen
Speaker 1: and that sends hearts. Now the hearts show up on screen.
Speaker 1: Can Anyone? Can anyone send me some hearts while I
Speaker 1: talk about this? Makes me feel better. But the hearts
Speaker 1: show up on screen and indicate that people are enjoying
Speaker 1: what they see. Hearts have also come into play in rankings,
Speaker 1: so accounts that get a lot of hearts get more
Speaker 1: visible in the periscope APP. Um when you start looking
Speaker 1: for periscopes to watch, the ones that accumulate a lot
Speaker 1: of hearts are the ones that go to the top
Speaker 1: of those lists. I am so far behind the leaders
Speaker 1: in this space that unless you just obsessively tap the
Speaker 1: screen every time I go on periscope, I won't ever
Speaker 1: show up on that list, which is okay. And unlike Merecat,
Speaker 1: the chatting doesn't go to twitter. All of that chat
Speaker 1: remains in the periscope APP, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about broadcasting your questions or comments to the whole world.
Speaker 1: It's just the people who are watching, although if you
Speaker 1: do watch the video stream after it goes offline, then
Speaker 1: you still have that issue. Oh and I see that
Speaker 1: I'm stuttering a bit online, so that's fun. Once a
Speaker 1: stream is done, it stays available for twenty four hours
Speaker 1: before disappearing. So you can save a stream to your
Speaker 1: mobile device, if you have enough storage on your device
Speaker 1: to do that, and then you can upload it to
Speaker 1: it to Youtube or some other service if you wanted to. Now,
Speaker 1: if you haven't download the periscope APP, you probably aren't
Speaker 1: really aware of how it looks or or you know
Speaker 1: what it looks like rather or how it works. First
Speaker 1: you have to download the APP and install it. Obviously
Speaker 1: that's your first step, and then you have to sign
Speaker 1: into periscope. You can do that either by using your
Speaker 1: twitter handle and password or through your phone number. So
Speaker 1: if you don't have twitter, you don't. You don't have
Speaker 1: to have it to use periscope. It's just a lot
Speaker 1: of functionality will be taken out if you don't have twitter.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to concentrate on the android version because
Speaker 1: I own an android phone, so that's what I'll be
Speaker 1: talking about. But the IOS one is very similar to
Speaker 1: the same features. I just can't necessarily say the layout
Speaker 1: is exactly the same. They may be slightly different. But
Speaker 1: on the android version you've got three icons at the
Speaker 1: top left of the screen when you log in. One
Speaker 1: lists any live streams from the folks you follow on periscope.
Speaker 1: It also lists any streams from the past twenty four
Speaker 1: hours that came from those accounts, including your own. Then
Speaker 1: there's a globe icon that let that the live streams
Speaker 1: from around the world that you might be interested in,
Speaker 1: and then there's a little cluster of people icon. That
Speaker 1: list the people you follow on twitter who are also
Speaker 1: on periscope, so you can follow them on periscope as well,
Speaker 1: assuming you logged into periscope through twitter, that is. And
Speaker 1: under that list of the folks you know is a
Speaker 1: list of the most loved accounts, and those are the
Speaker 1: accounts that have accumulated the most hearts. That's the list
Speaker 1: I'm never ever going to be on. Now in the
Speaker 1: upper right corner of the people page is a link
Speaker 1: to your accounts, so you can click on that and
Speaker 1: see how you stack up, like how many people do
Speaker 1: you follow? How many people follow you? How many hearts
Speaker 1: have you accumulated as of this recording right now? This
Speaker 1: is my third periscope broadcast I've ever done and before
Speaker 1: I started recording I had around a hundred fifty followers
Speaker 1: and just over eight hundred hearts. So we'll see how
Speaker 1: many I have at the end. UH, probably not that
Speaker 1: many more, but that's that. That tells you I'm at
Speaker 1: eight hundred. The top periscopers have millions and millions of hearts,
Speaker 1: so I'm not in that league. There's also a camera
Speaker 1: icon on the screen and that initiates the live stream.
Speaker 1: So if you touch that icon it'll prompt you to
Speaker 1: make a few more choices. One thing is you can
Speaker 1: set the live stream to either public or private. A
Speaker 1: private livestream can go out to all your followers or
Speaker 1: just specific people you designate. So I could do a
Speaker 1: periscope livestream to a single person if I wanted to. UH,
Speaker 1: and it won't all show up to the public. They
Speaker 1: won't be able to view that stream, at least the
Speaker 1: video stream won't show up to the public. There was
Speaker 1: a problem in periscope's early design that involved twitter and
Speaker 1: private video titles. So if the twitter option was on
Speaker 1: and you created a private event, the title of the
Speaker 1: Stream would get tweeted out. Only the people you authorized
Speaker 1: would actually be able to watch the stream, but the
Speaker 1: title went to everyone. So if you made a title
Speaker 1: that was Oh Raunchy, or you know, you were making
Speaker 1: an in solder or something and you thought it was
Speaker 1: funny because only the people who are following you were
Speaker 1: going to see it, here's the problem. It would go
Speaker 1: out on your twitter feed if you had that activated,
Speaker 1: and everyone would see the title. They couldn't see the video,
Speaker 1: but they would know what you were talking about, so
Speaker 1: that was an issue. If your periscope account is linked
Speaker 1: to twitter, you can choose to tweet out the live
Speaker 1: stream to your followers, which I did at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this stream, and you also need to give your
Speaker 1: stream a name, so you have to title it. My
Speaker 1: first pair of SCOPE was, I think, called walking timbalt. Tibled,
Speaker 1: by the way, is the name of my puppy dog,
Speaker 1: and he is a puppy, and I think that's where
Speaker 1: seven hundred of the eight hundred hearts I have came from.
Speaker 1: So those hearts really don't belong to me. They belonged
Speaker 1: to Tibalt and he earned them, so I'm not upset.
Speaker 1: Once you're ready, you hit the start broadcasting button and
Speaker 1: you go. That's it. It's streaming. People who follow you
Speaker 1: on periscope will get a notification, if they have push
Speaker 1: notifications turned on, that you are live, and if you
Speaker 1: send a message through twitter, that will get more folks
Speaker 1: following you and watching you. Now that also means you'll
Speaker 1: get notifications when the people you follow go live as well.
Speaker 1: Those notifications will pop up on your mobile device. You
Speaker 1: can open the APP and watch and interact at that point,
Speaker 1: and periscope can use both the forward facing and rear
Speaker 1: facing cameras. On a mobile device, you can switch between
Speaker 1: the two either by double tapping on the screen or
Speaker 1: you can swipe down, which pulls up some settings and
Speaker 1: you can change it there. This lets you show people
Speaker 1: your point of view or pull it back so you
Speaker 1: can have a camera focused on your face so you
Speaker 1: can address the camera directly. Some other things to keep
Speaker 1: in mind when you're using periscope. If you have the
Speaker 1: location data on your of your phone turned on and
Speaker 1: you activate that on periscope, it will show where you
Speaker 1: are to people who are viewing the stream. This can
Speaker 1: be a privacy concern to in fact, I think originally
Speaker 1: it was set on by default. Now it's set off,
Speaker 1: at least on mine, by default. So if I want to,
Speaker 1: I can choose that and let people know where I am,
Speaker 1: but some people have pointed out this could be a
Speaker 1: privacy concern. Now, if you were to broadcast where you were,
Speaker 1: then that could be a safety issue, depending upon who
Speaker 1: you are and who's watching, especially if you're broadcasting from
Speaker 1: your home and you don't generally make that information publicly available,
Speaker 1: it could be a big issue. Some other things to
Speaker 1: keep in mind when using periscope. If you have the
Speaker 1: location data on your phone turned on and uh and
Speaker 1: you don't want people to know exactly where you are,
Speaker 1: you should switch that off. You should also keep in
Speaker 1: mind that maybe the neighbors around you don't want the
Speaker 1: world to know where they live. So just courtesy is
Speaker 1: something that you have to keep in mind. Also, there
Speaker 1: is a limit on how many people can chat on
Speaker 1: a stream. Not that I'm ever going to hit that,
Speaker 1: but once that limit is reached, anyone else trying to chat,
Speaker 1: we'll see that they can't say anything. They're blocked from chatting,
Speaker 1: and that's to make sure that the video isn't completely
Speaker 1: drowned out by chat messages for these super popular feeds,
Speaker 1: the ones that get millions of hearts in a particular stream.
Speaker 1: So mother features that are useful in periscope include the
Speaker 1: ability to block someone in chat, which is really helpful
Speaker 1: if you find someone to be particularly annoying, and you
Speaker 1: can also block someone in general so that they won't
Speaker 1: see you when you go live from that point forward.
Speaker 1: Also important if someone's trolling you. Unfortunately, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of female users who have loved the functionality of periscope,
Speaker 1: but I've received some terrible harassment, and it's a good
Speaker 1: thing that that feature exists so that they can at
Speaker 1: least address that themselves. It's unfortunate that it happens, uh,
Speaker 1: and I certainly hope that all of my tech stuff
Speaker 1: fans are the type who would never do that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. I'm pretty sure you're not. You always are
Speaker 1: awesome to me. We've got a bit more to say
Speaker 1: about how periscope works, which still feels weird to say
Speaker 1: in the present tense after these messages. So how does
Speaker 1: roscope work? We've got the what it does, but how
Speaker 1: does it work? Well, not everything has been revealed, but
Speaker 1: I imagine that it's relying upon a specific protocol. It's
Speaker 1: called H t t p live streaming, also known as
Speaker 1: H L S. it's kind of a real time communications
Speaker 1: 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 APP 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. I appreciate it,
Speaker 1: but the studio might not same thing with writers or
Speaker 1: really anyone who deals with any you know, stuff that
Speaker 1: could be sensitive material, for instance here and how stuff works.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm since I'm periscoping right now, I wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that everyone I came into contact with knew
Speaker 1: I was periscoping so that they would have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to put on their best face so that we don't
Speaker 1: get any moments of someone having a maybe a moment
Speaker 1: they don't want broadcast to the entire world. So it's
Speaker 1: it's actual requiring us to think about being courteous online.
Speaker 1: And you don't have to be famous to get a
Speaker 1: following on periscope, or at least you don't have to
Speaker 1: start off being famous to get a following. You could
Speaker 1: get a big following and become famous that way. A
Speaker 1: couple of people have actually already and it's not even
Speaker 1: that old of an APP. Some people are even using
Speaker 1: it to create live entertainment events. So they're making up
Speaker 1: like almost like a live television show, complete with effects
Speaker 1: and different characters, and it's really incredible to think, like
Speaker 1: it's like the old days of live radio and live TV. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's something really special about being present when something is
Speaker 1: happening for real, like when it's happening at that time
Speaker 1: and uh, I really love that's my favorite, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things about live theater and now it's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite things about this live streaming. But there
Speaker 1: is this big concern about privacy, and it's not just
Speaker 1: about the location data. It's also about those people around
Speaker 1: you who may not want their faces or voices broadcast
Speaker 1: to the general public. So, personally, what I've I've taken
Speaker 1: upon myself is when I'm walking through a neighborhood. I
Speaker 1: the second live stream I ever did was my walk
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: that I had the camera facing forward, Um, as in
Speaker 1: a 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 a 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, just,
Speaker 1: as you know, thoughtfulness for them. I hope that that
Speaker 1: becomes a regular thing for most people. So if I'm
Speaker 1: in a public space I'll probably switch the camera to
Speaker 1: reflect my view of the world. Uh, and if I'm
Speaker 1: in a space it's not as public, I would have
Speaker 1: it on me instead. There's also a big concern about piracy.
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: that then everyone else has to turn their device sideways.
Speaker 1: Anyone watching on the Internet has to like through a browser,
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
Speaker 1: notices and of the ones that were not, they ended
Speaker 1: before the fight did, possibly because of hearing about the
Speaker 1: takedown notices that were going out to other people. So
Speaker 1: that was how periscope works and of course, as I
Speaker 1: was mentioning, it, is no more. Twitter shut periscope down
Speaker 1: in March of one, sighting declining user numbers like there.
Speaker 1: No one was using it, so there was no reason
Speaker 1: to support it. Is essentially what it came down to.
Speaker 1: So maybe at some point I'll actually do a full
Speaker 1: update on this to just talk about what happened in
Speaker 1: the years between one when it was shut down. But yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: we we salute you, periscope. We hardly knew you. You
Speaker 1: only stuck around for a few years. But yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a that's this classic episode. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics I should cover on tech stuff, please reach out
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Speaker 1: The handle for the show is tech stuff, hs W
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