zlacker

Twitter used to have an app, Periscope. You could start a livestream any time, anywhere. And viewers could fine live streams on a world map.

For a few months, it was possible to feel the incredible simultaneity and richness of human lives. Someone biking, another person cooking. Day in one place, night in another place.

It was ahead of its time. And too expensive for Twitter to keep running for too long. But it was a precursor to today's Snapschat's map view and Instagram live streams.

>>pradn+(OP)
they should bring it back

>>tonyha+Y
I’m struggling to imagine Elon Musk doing that.

>>pradn+(OP)
And before that, there was Bambuser which was very similar to Periscope but launched some 8 years earlier. It never gained the popularity of Periscope, likely at least partly due to its Nordic rather than Bay Area roots - but, oh boy, was it fun!

At any time of the day you could go to the website and watch normal people around the globe doing random stuff. And chat with them!There weren't any real influencers at the time (at least not on the platform) and monetization wasn't possible, so people's motivations for live streaming stuff was not to make money but rather the joy of sharing a moment or just experiencing new cool technology. It got a bit less joyful when the Arabic Spring started and the platform got used by many in very dire situations but it remained incredibly interesting to follow.

The company still exists, though they stopped offering free-to-use consumer services long ago.

>>pradn+(OP)
GPS spoofing ruined any potential for local-first content.

>>tonyha+Y
I think Twitter is losing enough money already, doubt they could afford to do that

>>ttul+Pd
Isn't that exactly what he did when live-streaming on X last year?

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1653608284606312448

"This is 2015 Periscope code. Yeah, seems like we just need to improve it a bit."