When Periscope appeared in March 2015, the app seemed to embody the future of social networks. Its principle was simple: allow any user to broadcast live what they see with their phone, while viewers comment on the video and send hearts. The idea was born after Kayvon Beykpour’s trip to Istanbul during the 2013 protests. While he could read on Twitter what was happening in the streets, he found no simple way to observe events in real time. With Joe Bernstein, he then imagined a service turning every smartphone into a television camera.
Twitter quickly understood the project’s potential and acquired Periscope even before its public launch. The exact amount of the deal was never officially isolated, but Twitter paid $86.6 million to acquire Periscope and the company Niche. Several estimates place Periscope’s value around $50 to $75 million. The social network then wanted to get ahead of Meerkat, a competing app that had become one of the sensations of the South by Southwest festival. Periscope was finally launched on iPhone on March 26, 2015, then on Android two months later.
Spectacular but Difficult-to-Measure Growth
The initial figures gave the impression of a meteoric success. Periscope reached one million users in just ten days and hit 10 million registered accounts in four months. In August 2015, the app claimed nearly 1.9 million daily active users and more than 350,000 hours of video watched each day, equivalent to forty years of viewing. For its first anniversary in March 2016, it announced having hosted more than 200 million broadcasts. Users then watched the equivalent of 110 years of live video daily on mobile apps.
However, these impressive data concealed an initial weakness. Periscope mainly communicated on the number of accounts created, live streams launched, and cumulative hours, but much less on the actual loyalty of its audience. Of the 10 million registered users announced in August 2015, fewer than two million used the service daily. Broadcasts were numerous, but a large portion gathered very few viewers and disappeared quickly. Live streaming attracted attention during exceptional events, protests, attacks, or sports competitions, but struggled to become a daily habit for the majority of users.
Uncontainable Competition
Periscope’s main problem came from how quickly its innovations were adopted by much more powerful platforms. Facebook popularized Facebook Live, Instagram integrated live video, YouTube made broadcasts from phones easier, and Twitch consolidated its dominance among gamers and creators. These competitors already had hundreds of millions, even billions, of users. They did not need to convince the public to download an additional app: live streaming was directly accessible from a social network used daily.
Periscope also faced significant moderation challenges. Users illegally broadcasted sports matches, pay channels, or shows protected by copyright. The boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, sold for nearly $100 as pay-per-view in the United States in 2015, was massively rebroadcast by viewers from their phones. The app also confronted pornographic, violent, suicidal, or criminal content streamed live. Unlike recorded videos, a live stream cannot always be reviewed before broadcasting, making interventions more complex and costly.
Integration into Twitter That Doomed the App
Twitter itself ended up weakening Periscope by progressively integrating its features into its main app. From 2016, users could launch a live video from Twitter using Periscope’s technology. This decision was logical to develop the live audience, but it gradually removed all utility from the standalone app. Why open Periscope when the same function is available on Twitter, with its followers, news feed, and notifications? The product became an internal technology provider rather than an autonomous social network.
Monetization did not save the service either. Periscope experimented with “Super Hearts,” virtual hearts purchased by viewers and convertible into income for some creators. But this system arrived late and never built an economy comparable to those of YouTube or Twitch. The app also struggled to offer sustainable revenue sharing from advertising. Without a strong business model, with a declining audience and increasing expenses for video hosting, maintenance, and moderation, Periscope became a burden for Twitter.
Over 100 Million Downloads Before Closure
In December 2020, Twitter announced that Periscope would be removed from app stores in March 2021. The company acknowledged that its usage had been declining for several years and that its operation had become financially “unsustainable.” According to Sensor Tower, Periscope had nevertheless accumulated about 101 million downloads worldwide. In 2020, the app still recorded 6.8 million installs, compared to 7.3 million the previous year, a 7% decrease. New accounts were immediately blocked, and users were invited to download their archives. The final closure occurred on March 31, 2021.
The failure of Periscope therefore does not lie in its idea, widely adopted since, but in its inability to transform an innovation into a sustainable platform. The app popularized vertical live streaming, instant comments, and interaction between broadcasters and viewers. Yet, it never found a strong enough economic identity against digital giants. Its main features survived in Twitter Live, later becoming a component of X. Periscope thus won the battle of usage, since live video is now omnipresent, but lost that of brand, audience, and profitability.
