Periscope — Explore the world through someone else's eyes

I wonder if anyone will Periscope the Meerkat team meerkating its funding announcement.

@benln one can only hope. At least with Periscope you can watch it if you miss it.

@benln @paulprins $14m at a 40m valuation from Greylock (dont quote me) but ya time to pivot boys! Meerkat Roulette

@benln ... oh my god they killed kenny you bastards

@_jacksmith "Unlike Meerkat, Periscope can save streams so that you can replay them later. It turns out to be Periscope’s killer feature — and the main reason that it’s likely to become my live-streaming platform of choice." - http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/2... Although there is #katch on Meerkat now.

@_jacksmith the major advantage is that you can run Periscope on iOS 7.1, which means that people who have an iPhone 4 or that have decided to stay on iOS 7.1 can use the app. The main difference between the two apps will be the community they manage to build.

@_jacksmith @pierrickgt Definitely agree it all comes down to the community! Note: if anyone is on iOS 7.1 still, they should upgrade.

@_jacksmith Maybe for users - having a chance to rise to the top? (I haven't downloaded it yet.) But I did find that not being a "day 1, first 5 hours adopter of Meerkat" sunk my ability to rise on the platform. Also, I need more friends.... :/

@benln @jackrometty After you finish streaming on Meerkat, there is a big, green "Save this stream" button

@alexia @dtrinh @rrhoover Thanks Ryan! I think David Pierce did a great job covering the backstory here after we spoke in detail about it: http://www.wired.com/2015/03/per... I think Joe and I sort had the same inkling around the same time. For me, my trip to Turkey planted the seed. We both were fascinated by the idea of seeing the world, right now, through someone else's eyes. But our approach / execution has changed A LOT from when we first started working on the idea. We definitely didn't start with live streaming in mind (we didn't want to make a video company for the sake of having a live video company). We started with photos, and a flow that resembled more of a marketplace. Basically: you'd put a 'bounty' on something you'd want to see, and other people could put claims on that bounty in the form of photos. Say I wanted to see what it was like at the Tokyo Fish Market.. you could create request and have others submit photos (that could then get upvoted/downvoted). We had a lot of fun building it, and using it but realized a few things 1) Photos aren't a great way of seeing what's happening right now, somewhere. Just not dynamic enough, and "now" enough. 2) Exploring the world through a marketplace model is incredibly hard without massive scale. Huge cold start problem (What are the odds that there's somebody out there to fulfill a request for some specific thing I'm looking for?) We realized that live video could be a really powerful in letting you see what was happening right now (It's LIVE; it's unfiltered, it's unfettered). And we decided to flip the model and let anybody share, if they had something they wanted to show the world. Those gut changes led to our subsequent prototype, which started to take the form of what Periscope looks like today (at least, conceptually). Still, between that point and today was months of self discovery and iteration. Looking forward to talking to you more about the story when we get together :)

@alexia @dtrinh @rrhoover @kayvz thanks for sharing your insights on the gut changes going from the photo marketplace to the current app, awesome to read that

@alexia @dtrinh @kayvz @rrhoover The future will be very interesting with millions of people using this. With the location data Twitter could start digitising events with all the videos they have. Mix it up with some VR and you could relive important historic events like you were there. Here's an almost 3 year old thought provoking piece on this by @raymazza, lead game designer of The Sims: http://www.raymazza.com/blog/how...

@bentossell Absolutely. Under the list of live broadcasts is your personal feed (which is probably empty for you since you just joined!). I agree that the current list of global broadcasts can be a bit overwhelming! This is something we'll definitely adjust to find a better balance (it's cool to see what's live right now, but practically you also want to easily see *your* feed without much noise)

@kayvz Yeah, I have a few streams from testing earlier...Would just prefer to have my feed as default and then a "discover" tab like Twitter does...my opinion anyway :)

@appmeerkat @stevesi Same here, played around with it and the recording of it all makes me a bit more careful. Has a different feel to it after a stream when you see it being saved.

@appmeerkat @stevesi I was upset when I would have to miss out on live streams on Meerkat because I am in the middle of a meeting or am not on a WiFi network. It's nice to not have that pressure as a viewer to basically drop everything and watch the stream. Glad to see the save feature showing up.

@appmeerkat @joedandachli That FOMO is both the benefit and the challenge. That's why I like scheduled live. I wonder if recorded streams will wind up being scripted and rehearsed sort of like reality tv?

@appmeerkat @joedandachli @stevesi I'm looking forward to the Saturday Night Live of mobile streaming. In the 70's, Lorne Michaels and the SNL crew created a broadcast phenomenon for the first generation who grew up on TV. The core audience was young adults. The first generation who grew up on the Internet is just now maturing, and is similarly of the young adult demographic. We're about to witness a content explosion on this new medium that hasn't been seen since YouTube first came out, and possibly even since widespread adoption of the television.

@Kayvz @benrbn Damn Ben makes it hard to not be rooting for Meerkat

@benrbn Gracious responses to both the "little guy" who was working on a competitor and gave it up, and THE direct competitor with all the backing in the world. Impressive.

@Kayvz @benrbn Come on, Ben, you need to be a bit less likeable.

@Kayvz @benrbn Thanks man. Let's get together! It's tempting to dogfood and meet over Meerscope, but I say we do it the old fashioned way :) By the way, one of the most serendipitous things that I find fascinating is how both of our metaphors (the Meerkat & the Periscope) share the same characteristic of peering up/down/side-to-side. Feels like telepathy, or as you call it, "spontaneous togetherness" that we share such a similar metaphor. <3

@Kayvz agreed! :-) pinging you now we should def grab breakfast!

Good point, I wonder the same about @onair which is near and dear to me. Then again, it's in the best interest of the consumer to have multiple options.

@nicolasegosum I kind of disagree with you on that. You saw FB try and knock out Snapchat and Yo last year, Google tries to knock out growing start ups all the time and misses the target. Google Plus? [fart noise]. I think now more than ever startups are able to grow and react quicker than big companies and win over users. IP protection on apps is NOT the answer. Not sure anything could kill the app world quicker than allowing that.

@nicolasegosum This shows how important it is to build a great product that can stand on its own - don't build a feature build a product :D

@nicolasegosum @kristofertm I don't think that FB tried to knock out Snapchat or Yo - hard to do when there is so much momentum going for them. The big guys - FB, Google, etc., are playing the long game while the smaller guys - Meerkat, etc., are playing the sprint. You have to ask yourself who has the ability to stick around longer - to essentially outrun the rest. Will it be Meerkat's $12M + 400K users that relies mostly on Twitter for awareness or Twitter's Periscope that doesn't have to "earn" but has an "available" audience in the 100's of millions (plus deeper pockets). Sometimes the tech that should win doesn't because it can't keep up the pace.

@nicolasegosum @morewillie just had a debate about this - dont rely on a giants services; they can come in and shut you down anytime.

@jonas @sleinadsanoj I only saw Twitter supporters/investors declaring it to be a "groundbreaking UX"

@jonas @austenallred yes, but I thought they would at least have SOME kind of basis for it? They said it would be as much a "revolution" as "Instagram"... Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough, but I sure as hell can't find any of that. :-/

@jonas @sleinadsanoj Have you seen those floating hearts?! Groundbreaking! :)

@jonas @sleinadsanoj @morewillie Well to be fair, Twitter acquired Periscope a long time ago, so *technically* they did break a lot of this ground. They just broke it far away where only twitter employees could see :)

@kayvz Appreciate you will get lots of questions today, especially with the live streaming frenzy that is going on recently.... any idea when the Twitter integration will be live? I want to stream an event for my company in 45 minutes haha

@bentossell yep, Twitter integration will be live around 7am PST (the original time of our launch). Looks like our app store link was discovered quite a few hours earlier than we would have hoped, hence the delay there :) sorry about that!

@kayvz Hi, Kayvon. I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about how you and your team is handling the media attention focused on Periscope. It's a very unique situation. Not many apps launch to such buzz and a manufactured horse-race against a close competitor (I don't believe this is a winner take all scenario). Do you guys talk about Meerkat internally? Embrace the media attention? Block it all out? Is it exciting or scary? How do you keep your team focused and productive with all this going on?

@kayvz will you at some point be able to schedule broadcasts on periscope? One of the biggest complaints I've heard is people have never even seen a live stream because they click a dead link.. (Different since periscope records) I've found its nice to be able to alert followers prior to so they can join.

@eric3000 Hey Eric, I appreciate the question. The situation has felt really bizarre. Our preference would have been to stay heads down and under the radar until we launched. We'd rather have our product speak for itself. Having the acquisition be public for even a couple weeks just builds unintended hype and anticipation, which leads to all kinds of judgement, distraction and expectation. It's really weird working on something for a year, and then having people judge it without you having really been ready to share it yet. But given how much media attention Twitter gets generally, it was unavoidable for the press to write about rumors once news of the deal leaked. All that being said, we really just tried to zone it out as much as possible and remind ourselves that we've been working hard on something for awhile, and that we owed it to ourselves to focus for the home stretch without getting caught up in the juicy dialogue in the media.

@bryceadams Thank you for redirecting some light to the human element. We often forget this here in the Valley.

@bramk hahaha!

@austenallred As far as I know, Periscope was being built before Meerkat was released. Twitter is trying to mirror their Vine acquisition strategy here, and I think it'll work. But that doesn't mean Meerkat is dead.

@austenallred Totally respect your opinion, but personally I don't look at this as a David vs Goliath story. We've been working on Periscope for a year. We may be crazy, but we just have this inkling that if we're successful in building what we think Periscope *can* be, that it'll be a good thing for the world. And we decided that doing it with Twitter would let us make that vision come to life faster. The fact that another company like Meerkat had a similar idea with a different approach is a GOOD thing. Just like Periscope, and every other startup out there: they're just hustling to build something they care about and make it come to life in the best way possible (which they may do independently, with VC support, without VC support, as part of a bigger company, or whatever other vehicle makes sense for them). I think the world benefits from having more tools to choose from, and a marketplace that's hungry to innovate/differentiate to create value for users. I don't think it's a battle between two companies. I think that we each have our own battle against ourselves to build something great, that holds up against our ideals and continues to evolve and grow. That path for each of us may end up being similar, or totally divergent.. but I think it's just too early to tell. I say that because from my perspective, Meerkat's just not on the top of my mind. Top of mind is the 11+ months worth of pent up excitement/planning around what I know Periscope is capable of if we keep building/executing.

@austenallred thanks so much Austen. Really appreciate it!

@austenallred @kayvz Regardless congrats to you and the team, Kayvon!

@scottbelsky Thanks for sharing this Scott. Major shoutout to @scottbelsky for being our earliest investor, and advisor. It was his gentle nudge to consider live video rather than photos. He's been a close friend and advisor ever since.

@guygal "Case and point, meerkat is featured in the App Store today, not periscope." Meerkat was featured since last week. Apple updates the featured page every Thursday. It hasn't been updated yet. I am pretty sure Periscope will get featured today. Edit: Called it. Featured today on App Store. :) Meerkat still trending on the list as well though.

@guygal - both Periscope and Meerkat are brand new and startups are multiple year journeys. It's too early to "claim" a winner and the truth is, it's not an either / or. Livestreaming is a massive opportunity and there's room for many players, especially if you see this bleeding into traditional TV and video consumption behavior (which I do). Being a part of Twitter gives Periscope some interesting opportunities, and closes others (e.g. you might not see tight Facebook integration, at least for a while). Curious to hear more about this from @kayvz. P.S. Vine is not obscure. It might be relatively off the radar for this tech audience but it still has millions of active users.

@rrhoover agree regarding "claiming a winner" and all the upside in the 20 years ahead... already bleeding into TV, NBC News used meerkat to live stream an interview on the Rachel Maddow show last week. To quote Rachel, "whoa, a live stream used to take tens of thousands of dollars and a day to set up". RE: Vine, depends on your definition. Yes, millions of active users that consume the content, but creators who actually get views number in the hundreds and most people don't know what Vine is. So not obscure/unknown in the tech world, but certainly is in the consumer market. Super curious to understand if @kayvz has plans (and/or permission space) to eventually path Periscope outside of Twitter or if the end game is just deeper integration.