Periscope is a fascinating, game-changing app

I remember exactly where I was & what I was doing when I first saw NCSA Mosaic, Photoshop, Flash, Google, and YouTube. Periscope—the live-streaming video app from Twitter—just joined that rarefied list.

After failing for weeks to “get” the similar Meerkat, I tried Periscope this weekend & was spellbound. In ~30 minutes of total usage, I…

  • learned that Scott Kelby was doing a street shoot in Amsterdam, sent him comments, and heard him reply
  • learned that Scott’s colleague RC Concepcion was doing a shoot in Florida & interacted with him
  • saw a former YouTuber broadcast from her balcony, said hi, and heard her reply
  • learned that a comedian I follow on Twitter is near me, walking to Wrestlemania at Levi’s Stadium
  • watched a friend’s kids play on the beach & said hi

I’m fascinated by the storytelling potential here & in tools like Snapchat Stories—which are evidently mindblowingly popular.

Like a fool, perhaps, I poured myself into trying to help normal people craft better stories (better-chosen shots, better-looking/sounding content). But people don’t do that: they want something “easier than iMovie,” and instead of trying to make things “better,” you can instead make people not care. That is, you replace technical quality (lighting, sound, edits) with immediacy. If your creation is here today, gone today, no one will judge you on aesthetic merits.

Getting all this right will take time, but it feels thrillingly fresh in ways I didn’t—and don’t yet—foresee.

3 thoughts on “Periscope is a fascinating, game-changing app

  1. Love your “Like a fool…” statement, so true, its no longer about aesthetic anywhere, in this case immediacy and the feeling of connectivity triumphs.

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