What On Earth Is Periscope?

Move over Selfie Stick. Periscope is here!

I’ve been hearing a lot on my Instagram feed of late about “Periscope”. Live streaming from your phone never got easier!

So as the social media loving person that I am, I couldn’t resist downloading the app and giving it a go. The basic premise is that you can film anything live and it streams to anyone who has the same app. You give it a title and viewers will come.

What’s so interesting about Periscope is that it is interactive. If people like what’s going on the give you hearts. These hearts impact how “high up” on Periscope’s list you are. Viewers can also type in comments which often the streamer will comment on.

Andy and I have been having a bit of a play with Periscope over the past couple of weeks. We joined a tv news anchor live on television. She greeted us as our name appeared and then she was amazed when we said were were in NZ. We watched from her news desk as she read the news and then viewed the weather guy with his green screen from “behind the scenes”. They joked around a lot and tried to put the weather guy off as he was presenting. A bit of fun and quite fascinating really. We then moved on to a guy in Australia who was playing his guitar. He seemed really nice and we felt like we sort of knew him. Ok. This is a bit weird isn’t it. I have also tuned into audience members “scoping” some amazing speakers at a conference, I went to a Dave Matthews Band concert , I saw an evangelist in India, and I’ve joined a lot of people waiting at airports – all in real time.

It will be interesting to see how Periscope plays out. Will brands use it? Will politicians use it? Will it have the ability to change our world? It’s a pretty powerful medium to be able to get out an unfiltered message to potentially thousands or millions of viewers. I have noticed that brands that are based on personalities are using it rather successfully. It connects the fanbase and the celebrity in a way that has never happened before.

As with all social media, parents will need to watch out for their kids. Things can go wrong very quickly in a live situation, although it does seem that there are ways of reporting objectionable “scopes”.

Oh yes. I must also mention that I tried “scoping” myself. It was pretty ridiculous how nervous I was – knowing that anyone in the world could tune in. My hand (the one holding my phone) shook with nerves and I quickly signed off after on a couple of minutes rather than chatting for 10 or more minutes like the successful Periscopers do.

So if you are a confident person with the gift of the gab, maybe Periscope is for you. If anything, it’s been a bit of fun and you might find that if you start Persiscoping that I might just tune in to you!