Periscope

Yeah, I practically watched the whole Mayweather-Pacquiao fight on it. I felt like I was right on the couch with that Fillipino family.

 

I just watched my first Periscope video: of a buddy playing stickball with his son. Pretty lame, but I can definitely see the value of it in more useful applications.

Hope there's wifi access, because there's not a data plan in the world that'll cover what something like that'll eat up.

 

So I run an entertainment site. For the nightly show review, I periscoped during commercial breaks for a live chat and to talk about what happened. Had 100-plus people, some firing off questions or asking an opinion. I think the live chat format is the best way to do it; maybe during March Madness you do a giant whiteboard with the brackets and do a Periscope of your picks?

 

I haven't downloaded the app yet, so maybe this will be obvious, but how do people chat with you? Is it like Skype? (Although guessing not since having 100 people talk at the same time would be a little obtrusive.)

 

They text, you talk. If you have enough watchers, questions come flying in quick. Downside is there's no way to moderate, so depending on the crowd you'll get some pretty rough comments thrown at you.
If I was at a paper covering a sport, if I'm at a big game and have the following, I'm doing a live chat before a game and after deadline. Not long, just long enough to talk about what's coming, what will be in the paper, then what happened and what you can expect to see in print/online.

 

And with the ability to save the chat (not sure how long it stays up) then people don't have to see you right then and there, so just assume whatever you record will be seen even if you don't have any live viewers. I noticed a few people have gone back and watched a few of my clips after the fact.

 

Don't know if anyone watched WaPo's Dan Worthington stream himself designing the sports front Wednesday night, but it was definitely a cool use of the app.

 

That was all over Twitter. Something I didn't expect to be a huge deal ended up going viral.

 

Has anyone had experience using it during a game? I cover preps here, figured it would be cool to periscope a tight finish between two rivals, or with the postseason around the corner, using it for then.

Thoughts?

 

If the postseason has broadcast rights, you may have your cred yanked.

 

Is that saved? Can I look it up and still watch it?

 

I think so. Rachel Nichols tweeted out a link and you need Periscope loaded on your phone to make it work.

I played around with Periscope over the weekend and six weirdos watched it live. I have no idea why.