Meerkat has been making news quite a bit lately as a popular new livestreaming app that lets you broadcast to your Twitter followers using your iPhone. Now a new app has arrived to challenge Meerkat for livestreaming dominance.
Periscope is now available for download on iOS. The app will notify your followers when you begin broadcasting live video, and those people can send you comments and “hearts.” You can choose to send out a Twitter link when your broadcast goes live, or you can keep a livestream private and choose select people to invite. Once your broadcast is done, a replay will be available for 24 hours, and viewers will be able to comment and heart your video during that time. However, you do have the option of deleting your replay at any time.
What makes Periscope especially noteworthy is that it was bought by Twitter in January, and the App Store listing shows that it’s published by Twitter. That means that the app is likely to get a major push from Twitter, and it will also get access to the Twitter social graph, which lets users easily find new friends to follow. Meerkat has this feature at launch, but Twitter cut off Meerkat’s social graph access earlier this month, putting it at a bit of a disadvantage in the livestreaming battle.
If you download Periscope, be sure to let us know what you think of it!
