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As recently as in June, Twitter opened up its Periscope live streaming service button to all users of its Android app. To use the feature, Android phone users simply had to click on the ‘Live’ button in their Twitter apps before being forwarded to the Periscope app where they could live stream their videos to their audience. Earlier today, it came to light that Twitter isn’t content with the achievement. The social media giant is now reportedly planning on letting select broadcasters include external sources in their live broadcasts- a move which will make it a lot easier for the usual broadcasters to add a lot more content to their streams than they usually can.
As of now, if you’re not among the select broadcasters who have been chosen for the beta trial, you can only stream content which you’ve recorded yourself on your smartphone or any other video-recording accessory. However, if the beta test turns out to be successful and Twitter does roll it out to all users of the Periscope app in the coming days, Twitter users and a large number of smaller broadcasters will surely be able to make their videos more informative, better in clarity and resolution and will be able to compete with large broadcasters who have the means to create such content on their own. The Periscope app is in it’s eighteenth month after being rolled out to iOS devices and Android devices in the months of March and May of last year respectively, and by March of this year, the app recorded over 200 million broadcasts worldwide, and a bulk of these broadcasts took place in the first three months of this year alone. It is thus possible that the addition of external content to live streams will make the numbers jump up higher in the coming months.
While Twitter is making efforts to make Periscope more inclusive and easier to use for all, the app is set to face bigger competition in the coming days from the likes of Facebook Live and YouTube Connect which will be able to tap the large user base that these two sites have. Apart from concentrating on video streaming, Twitter is also making efforts to bring in additional features and to improve existing features of the app. Back in May, the company introduced an update to the app’s search feature thanks to which users can now search for their favorite videos using hashtags or topics rather than just looking for other users who live stream their videos. As such, your broadcasts can be viewed by many more people who are not necessarily your followers and if you get the ability to add external content to your broadcasts, your broadcasts would be quite different than the ones you are recording at the moment.