It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a year since Twitter launched its livestreaming service, Periscope, to an eager public. What’s even harder to believe is how popular it has become since its debut on the market.
Twitter has revealed its first year stats for the livestreaming app, indicating that 200 million broadcasts have been hosted with it since its debut—100 million of which are from the past three months alone. On top of that, approximately 110 years worth of live video have been watched across both the iOS and Android applications, showing an overall increase of 91 percent since August.
Periscope has done a lot since its debut, even crushing its main opponent Meerkat in a matter of months, forcing the rival to reconsider its social media approach. The service also managed to gain some notoriety around live events, including illegal streams of the much-hyped Mayweather-versus-Pacquiao fight.
Periscope’s popularity has gotten to the point where other companies have developed their own livestreaming services to keep up, including Facebook’s live video streams and Google’s rumored development of YouTube Connect.
The breakdown below shows how much Periscope has grown over the past year, starting with its initial launch on iOS, its later support of devices like Apple TV and GoPro, and launching Periscope through Twitter. It was even named Apple’s App of the Year before its first year was complete.
As far as where Periscope will go in the coming year, Twitter will make (legal) live events the big focus, as CEO Jack Dorsey explained to Bloomberg that it “still centers around bringing people together to watch live events in the place where information comes the fastest.”
Now the question is if Periscope can help Twitter turn around its stagnant user numbers. The service reported that its user count for the last quarter came in at 320 million that contribute monthly, which is about the same as the previous quarter.
For the time being, the service has really taken off, and it’ll be interesting to see what innovations Twitter will introduce over the next year.
