Twitter’s live streaming app Periscope started the week with a series of announcements which includes new search functionality, permanent videos, and a partnership with popular drone maker DJI.
Periscope Search
Periscope is introducing search, which is news on its own because the app never before had full search functionality. Sure, you could look up a video by its location, but what if you wanted to surface videos based around a single topic? Soon you’ll be able to. In addition, the company says you will also be able to search by hashtag.
There are two ways to get your videos to show up in Periscope search results. You can either search for a topic and begin a broadcast from the search results page. Or, simply add a hashtag to the title of your video and it will show up under search results for that topic.
Permanent Videos
The ephemeral nature of Periscope videos is what the app initially built itself on; and now it’s almost doing away with the concept altogether. You will still have the option to set a time limit on your videos, but by default all broadcasts will now be saved permanently. Once saved, videos can be deleted at any point in time should you choose to not have them on your profile any longer.
Partnership with DJI
Drone maker DJI has partnered with Periscope to enable streaming directly from a drone’s eye view. It’s said to be as easy as connecting your iPhone to your drone’s remote, which will trigger Periscope to automatically pull in your drone’s video feed as the default broadcast. You can also switch camera views during a broadcast if you want to go back and forth between drone view and iPhone view.
All of these updates are said to be available “in the coming weeks”.
