Today Periscope has announced a slew of new features in a bid to remain competitive in the growing live broadcast segment of social media and they touch on broadcasts, drones and search.
Saving broadcasts beyond 24 hours
Previously, your broadcast could only be saved for only 24 hours after it went live and this was limiting if you were not able to watch it within that time. In the next few weeks, Periscope will launch the ability to save your broadcasts beyond the current 24 hours which will be saved automatically on Twitter and Periscope. Those broadcasts will contain the comments and hearts that you got during the broadcast too. If you want to remove the broadcast, there will be an option in the settings to easily configure that.
Broadcasts search
In the current format, you are limited to finding broadcasts using the global map which can be zoomed in to your location. Now, the company will launch in the next few weeks the ability to search for broadcasts by title or topic. Topics in this case are hashtags like #music or #food and title is of course the name of the broadcasts. In addition, they will be testing two special topics, First Scope which will allow you to welcome new broadcasters and GoPros and Drones which will allow you to find broadcasts being beamed from drones.
Drone and GoPro integration
Periscope will support certain drones from the popular manufacturer DJI where you only need to connect the drone to your iPhone and the app will pull the video feed from the drone. If the drone has a GoPro camera, Periscope will also pull the feed from it while allowing you to switch between that and the iPhone cameras. The footage looks something like this
The company is clearly trying to fend off the competition Facebook is bringing to the arena of Live Video broadcasts. On Facebook Live, you can save broadcasts and search for them and this is Periscope’s move to keep up. However, they have taken a leg up with the drone and GoPro support and it would be awesome to see the various broadcasts that will emanate from that.