The farewell to the precursor of streaming live apps. In this way, the end of Periscope, an app that helped popularize live streaming on cell phones, announced today on the company’s profile on Twitter, could be defined. The service has now been removed from app stores and features can stop working at any time.
Video streaming will now only be on Twitter, which acquired Periscope in March 2015, a few weeks before its official launch. Since December 2020, the Passinho Azul company had plans to terminate the platform’s services due to the unsustainability of the business.
This is it. Our final goodbye. Today is the last day the Periscope app will be available.
We leave you with our gratitude for all the creators and viewers who brighten the Periscope community. We hope to see you all live on Twitter.
– Periscope (@PeriscopeCo) March 31, 2021
The Periscope web page (periscope.tv) will remain active as a publicly read-only file, but it will not be possible to create a new account, make live streams or buy coins. Interested parties will be able to download their videos through a page created especially by Twitter for that purpose.
Whoever had a balance due to the receipt of coins by spectators must request a withdrawal by the end of April 2021. If they do not do so, they will lose the money accumulated on the platform.
Rise and fall
In August 2015, four months after the launch of the tool, the app reached the impressive milestone of 10 million users. This caused Periscope to dethrone Meerkat, the market leader until then.
Despite initial success, competitors have launched similar features and the app’s popularity has plummeted. Facebook, for example, strengthened its system to enable live streams and Twitter itself also added the ability to hold lives, making Periscope a purely accessory service.
One of the most striking episodes was the use of the platform for piracy purposes, when users used the app to broadcast the premiere of the fifth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones live. The same occurred with exclusive pay-per-view broadcasts, such as boxing matches and other events, which raised serious debates about the need for tools and policies to deal with copyrighted content.
Did you ever use Periscope? Share your stories with the app in the comment field below.
