Periscope quickly became a pretty popular live streaming app – which is available on both iOS and Android – when it launched in early 2015. It became popular because of the fact that within a matter of seconds you can start streaming and be connected with hundreds if not thousands of people around the world. While some of its popularity has died down since its inception, it is still a fairly popular app. But the issue Twitter is having with Periscope is helping people find new streamers (or “Scopers”) to follow on the platform. The reason why this is important is it’ll allow users to spend more time on Periscope, which is going to be imperative for Twitter when they brings ads on over to the platform. This is also something that Twitter has had trouble with on their own platform.
On Tuesday, Evan Hansen announced on his Medium blog that he has been hired as the Editor in Chief over at Periscope. He didn’t go into detail on what his main role would be at Periscope, but it looks like he’ll be curating the best streams for users to follow and check out. Hansen is the former Editor in Chief over at Wired, and then worked at Medium for quite some time in a similar position.
This is pretty big news for Periscope, and should help them compete with Facebook. Lately, Facebook has been going full-throttle when it comes to video, putting their Live Video button front-and-center in their mobile apps. Video has become popular lately for big platforms like Twitter and Facebook because of the ad revenue it can generate. Video ads typically bring in more money, which would generate more revenue for the companies. Seeing as that is their main source of income, it would make sense that they want to promote video features as much as possible.
Hansen will be starting at Periscope on May 16th. Now it’s going to be interesting to see what he can bring to the table at Periscope, especially where he was an Editor in Chief of a few written publications and now moving into video. It can be a bit challenging, but he is likely up to the task.