Twitter is making live video streaming an official part of its app

Get ready to see a lot more live video on Twitter.

More than a year after acquiring Periscope, the platform is finally making live streaming an official part of its app. Twitter was updated Wednesday with the ability to begin a live broadcast directly from the app without opening Periscope.




"Live" will now appear as an option alongside photo and video from your camera roll when you post a new tweet. Selecting live will begin a new Periscope stream just as it does in the app. And streams started on Twitter will be visible within the Periscope app as usual.

This may seem redundant to some (Periscope has been closely tied to Twitter for months), but the company says it will help encourage users to share more on-the-fly live video.

Whereas Periscope as a standalone app may be seen as catering to niche communities or "influencers," having live streaming baked right into Twitter makes it much more accessible for the average Twitter user who may not have the Periscope app.

"What this integration allows is for you to  leverage the audience you have on Twitter. For a lot of folks, who haven't taken the time to build their audience graph on Periscope, but have spent years investing in their audience graph on Twitter, this allows them to leverage all of their followers on Twitter without having to create a new graph," Sara Haider, senior manager of software engineering at Twitter tells Mashable.

Adding live streaming to Twitter's app has other advantages as well: it fits in nicely with the company's video-first strategy and its positioning as the social network where news happens.

Source: mashable