Brands can customize the hearts in Periscope live streams as part of a new initiative from Twitter. The social media company is letting brands add custom hearts to both the live Periscope videos and on-demand videos for their campaigns in an effort to give brands another tool that would enable them to boost their brand excitement a little bit. The custom hearts feature is said to be available from today for brand accounts and they work in the same way that the regular Periscope hearts work.
Users who are viewing the stream can tap on their device display while the stream is active to send hearts which lets the brand know that viewers are happy about a particular moment in the video or just that their viewers are supporting them. Custom Hearts do the exact same thing but they also bring a little bit more attention back to the brand as the hearts are tailored to the brand specifically and can take on a design which represents their overall style, and hearts are present throughout the stream so any users who are viewing it are able to see the custom hearts the entire time along the edge of the app’s user interface.
Brands are capable of adding their own custom graphics to use as the custom hearts, although the custom graphics are created in partnership with Twitter so Twitter is a part of the entire process of bringing these new custom hearts online for the stream they’re meant to be attached to, and the standard Periscope hearts don’t disappear completely, rather the custom hearts graphics that brands use are blended in with the standard hearts. Twitter has plans to bring more brands on board with the new campaign and feature, and they have kicked things off with NBC Universal for the premier of the Fate of the Furious movie that’s coming out in theaters, and during the broadcast viewers were able to see the custom “F8” heart graphic among the regular hearts that would pop up whenever viewers tap the display. The Fate of the Furious live stream on Periscope was actually live back on April 8th which is when the custom hearts debuted initially, but now all brands will be able to work with Twitter to create their own.