Periscope & Meerkat - Two Apps that could change how we report?

[Steve Miller]

In my opinion, it's a chaser's duty to report what they see in the interest of protection of life and property. Through the years the means by which eminent threat reporting has been accomplished has gone from amatuer radio and landline call-ins, to cellphones and streaming video, to apps like mPing and instagram.

The latest disruptive technology in the social space could be the next viable tool for chasers/spotters: Periscope and Meerkat.
The two apps are not identical, but they serve the same basic function: They stream video straight from your phone to the Internet. You open the smartphone app and start a broadcast. Other people using the app or who tune into your broadcast mid-stream, and watch and listen along live. Viewers can "like" what they see and submit comments that pop up in real time on the screen. Web viewing is possible too from a link supplied to your Twitter account. Periscope, launched by Twitter last Thursday, offers an optional replay button for streams that have ended; Meerkat streams vanish.

So give these a try and consider: will a service like this be a viable way to report and stream a live severe weather event?

 

[rdale]

I don't forsee this being a good "chase" stream simply because the feeds cannot be access outside of Twitter (and in Meerkat's case they just disappear forever.) So if you catch the big one, the only way you can share it with others is have them load Periscope and somehow find your recording... Periscope only sends streaming alerts to other Periscope users - not Twitter. So it's very "isolated."

Could this be valuable for those public reports? I could see that case - but again unless I know to constantly search the available feeds on my iPhone for a tornado, I'd never see it.

 

[Steve Miller]

Periscope sends streaming alerts to Twitter in the form of a user-generated tweet plus link to where the stream can be found on the web. This link can be copied to any platform as well as RT'd. If you're on your smart device this opens the app or, if you do not have the app, a browser window where the stream can be viewed.

 

[rdale]

Ahh - I didn't notice you had to enable that feature. That changes the field!

 

[James Hyde]

One thing that I would like to see automated or just user inputted is the time/date when the stream occurred. Imagine a stream goes up that says "WEDGE Tornado now approaching OKC, look at it!". This then gets RT'd a few weeks later and causes a panic in an unwittingly knowing member of the public. It could also amplify already
stretched bandwidth in chaser convergence.

Other than that, I think it's great for real-time verification and streaming. I personally am going to try and use it this year (once it comes out for Android).

 

[rdale]

if you do not have the app, a browser window where the stream can be viewed.

That didn't happen for me... Chrome tells me to get the app and sends me to iTunes. What browser are you using?

 

[ngjere]

Well, I'll certainly give it a try. BUT! the moment it interferes with my activities, off it goes. I believe that we should report situations of imminent danger to life and property. However, I don't believe we need to provide video play by play. And I don't need trolls consuming my Twitter feeds telling me how shitty my video is. Strangely, most users of this type of technology believe they have some sort of unearned expectation that I'm sharing my feed with them solely as they view it.

 

[Steve Miller]

That didn't happen for me... Chrome tells me to get the app and sends me to iTunes. What browser are you using?

Go start your stream and look at it from your browser while it's still live and that black screen will be your video.

 

[rdale]

Ahh... I was in the car when doing that So no way to watch a replay other than from iDevice?

 

[David Biggar]

Just got the app yesterday and I have been thinking of the uses for it (within the news category). This was one of the first things that came to mind...however, I have a feeling connectivity may be an issue depending on location.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

I started a new thread without realizing this is here, so I'm putting the copypasta of the other post below:

I tried an app out today that I think is likely going to make getting data in the plains a lot more of a chore. (Not that it's always great now -- especially when the ants start stacking up). It'll be somewhat mitigated by the fact that people don't have unlimited data any more, but I'm pretty sure it'll be an issue.

In the past couple of weeks, two new livestreaming services have launched. One was a pioneer, the other a copycat -- and the copycat will probably win, because it's backed by Twitter. The apps are called "Meerkat" and "Periscope". The goal of both programs is to make it incredibly easy for anyone, anywhere to livestream just by whipping out their phone and firing up the app. You can also watch live streams with the app. Right now, it can only film with vertical video, but Twitter has said that it will probably incorporate horizontal video into Periscope. The stream quality is excellent and the integration into smartphones is seamless. The bitrates on these streams is pretty high -- easily a gig an hour.

Lots of chasers livestream now. But these apps, which are destined to become popular, are likely going to entice a lot of people to livestream who would never have thought of doing so because of the setup issues -- i.e., needing to rig up cameras, a laptop, a wifi hotspot, adobe encoders, etc. This is literally just "press a button on your phone and it works" easy. Now imagine 400 GRLevel3 green ants under a storm in Oklahoma trying to livestream all at once. That cell tower may be 4G, but I doubt the backhaul was deisgned to handle anywhere near that much data. And even if it is, there is a limit to the spectrum bandwidth that even LTE can provide. This is probably going to be a problem.

I don't really think there is a way to mitigate this, unless these apps don't become popular. But they were the darlings of SXSW and are being heavily covered in tech media, so they're probably slam dunks.