Over 1 Million Sign-Ins within First 10 Days of Periscope Opened

Twitter today gave the first official news about the growth of its live-streaming video acquisition Periscope, with CEO Dick Costolo saying more than 1 million people signed in to the app in the first 10 days after its official launch on March 26. The public is closely watching Periscope’s growth, as it’s in a heated battle with independent competitor Meerkat for the mobile live-streaming market. Costolo said “we have seen tremendous early growth” in Periscope.

And that’s only on iOS. Periscope has yet to launch on Android, but Twitter investor Chris Sacca today previewed a version of Periscope for Google’s mobile OS during a Periscoped interview with the product’s CEO Kayvon Beykpour. The two revealed that Periscope’s web viewers will also get the ability to comment on streams today.

Periscope is now at No. 167 in the US-Overall iOS chart and No. 22 in US-Social Networking, according to App Annie. For comparison, Meerkat appears to have fallen out of the top 1,000 U.S. apps, and is at No. 129 in the US-Social Networking chart.

Costolo took time to specifically discuss video today during Twitter’s Q1 2015 earnings call. He also mentioned Twitter’s native video products and its acquisition of Niche [disclosure: My cousin is one of Niche’s founders], which connects Vine and other social media stars to brands so they can get paid for creating sponsored content.

CFO Anthony Noto mentioned that “Since the launch of native video on the platform on iOS and Android, we’ve seen orders of magnitude increases in the volume of video shared to Twitter. That content is some of the most engaging on the platform.”

Costolo also said that Twitter has the potential to push video to logged out users and syndication as well as people who use its apps, noting “I’m super excited and confident in the ability to grow the Periscope user base.”

If Twitter is a way to instantly know what someone’s thinking, Periscope instantly shows you what they’re seeing. Whether it’s for news, celebrities connecting with fans, or simply interesting content, all of Twitter’s top styles of tweets would be even more vivid with live-streamed video.I hear Costolo has been even more enthusiastic about video. Sources tell me that he has been telling new employees during orientation that “video is the future of Twitter.” That’s similar to how we heard Costolo pitched the acquisition to Periscope’s founders. The more organic video content Twitter can get on its platform, the more highly lucrative video ads it can insert without users getting mad.

Over 1 Million Sign-Ins within First 10 Days of Periscope Opened

Twitter today gave the first official news about the growth of its live-streaming video acquisition Periscope, with CEO Dick Costolo saying more than 1 million people signed in to the app in the first 10 days after its official launch on March 26. The public is closely watching Periscope’s growth, as it’s in a heated battle with independent competitor Meerkat for the mobile live-streaming market. Costolo said “we have seen tremendous early growth” in Periscope.

And that’s only on iOS. Periscope has yet to launch on Android, but Twitter investor Chris Sacca today previewed a version of Periscope for Google’s mobile OS during a Periscoped interview with the product’s CEO Kayvon Beykpour. The two revealed that Periscope’s web viewers will also get the ability to comment on streams today.

Periscope is now at No. 167 in the US-Overall iOS chart and No. 22 in US-Social Networking, according to App Annie. For comparison, Meerkat appears to have fallen out of the top 1,000 U.S. apps, and is at No. 129 in the US-Social Networking chart.

Costolo took time to specifically discuss video today during Twitter’s Q1 2015 earnings call. He also mentioned Twitter’s native video products and its acquisition of Niche [disclosure: My cousin is one of Niche’s founders], which connects Vine and other social media stars to brands so they can get paid for creating sponsored content.

CFO Anthony Noto mentioned that “Since the launch of native video on the platform on iOS and Android, we’ve seen orders of magnitude increases in the volume of video shared to Twitter. That content is some of the most engaging on the platform.”

Costolo also said that Twitter has the potential to push video to logged out users and syndication as well as people who use its apps, noting “I’m super excited and confident in the ability to grow the Periscope user base.”

If Twitter is a way to instantly know what someone’s thinking, Periscope instantly shows you what they’re seeing. Whether it’s for news, celebrities connecting with fans, or simply interesting content, all of Twitter’s top styles of tweets would be even more vivid with live-streamed video.I hear Costolo has been even more enthusiastic about video. Sources tell me that he has been telling new employees during orientation that “video is the future of Twitter.” That’s similar to how we heard Costolo pitched the acquisition to Periscope’s founders. The more organic video content Twitter can get on its platform, the more highly lucrative video ads it can insert without users getting mad.

Twitter pressures celebs to use Periscope over Meerkat

Twitter has reportedly been doing everything in its power to crush Meerkat and boost its own live streaming app, Periscope. That includes hounding celebrities and media companies that still use the competing service, and even applying pressure when possible.

According to TechCrunch, which detailed Twitter’s secret plans, the company is apparently threatening to cut off Meerkat’s access to Amplify, a service it offers to big brands like the NFL. Amplify makes it easier to build promoted tweets with built-in video and spread them on the social network. Meanwhile, the company is also going after celebrities, contacting them directly if they use Meerkat instead of Periscope.

“Twitter hounds every celebrity after they try Meerkat. Almost to the point of stalking,” one anonymous insider revealed to TechCrunch. Meerkat CEO Ben Rubin told the Silicon Valley blog that his team hasn’t reached out directly to any celebrities. “Since Meerkat launched on February 27, the team has actively approached zero people asking to use our product. All we do is work with inbound,” he said.

Since launching last month, Periscope quickly overtook Meerkat as the go-to live streaming app, perhaps due to Twitter’s early work to cut off Meerkat’s access to its social graph. With Twitter pushing the new service so aggressively, there may not be much room for any serious competition, though it’s probably still too soon to count Meerkat out entirely.

Periscope for Android coming “soon” as iPhone app gets new features

Periscope is a just a week old and already the company is rolling out its first update. The Twitter-owned app pushed out a handful of useful tweaks for its iPhone-owning fans on Thursday, adding that developers are hard at work on an Android equivalent.

Version 1.0.1 of the iPhone app actually includes a ton of helpful improvements. First, the homepage has been tweaked so the first thing you see up top is live streams from people you follow, and Periscope is also getting a new Featured section. The company promises to improved notifications, which can be a bit overwhelming, and switched the default setting to off for follower notifications.

Responding to complaints that the map included in each stream was too revealing, Periscope decided to zoom out a bit. You can also remove it entirely if you prefer. Finally, there’s some performance improvements packed in to cut back on lag in the app when viewing other streams.

That’s it for now, though we expect more updates soon as Periscope continues to improve and respond to our complaints and suggestions. As for that Android app, hopefully it’s just around the corner, though the company declined to offer an official launch window for the release.