Periscope, a live-video-streaming app that Twitter purchased in January, made its debut Thursday, a month after a similar app came on the scene.
The launch pits Periscope against the live-video-streaming Meerkat, which also announced Thursday that it had raised another round of funding led by venture capital firm Greylock Partners with help from other companies. It raised a reported $14 million.
“Today, it feels like we are at the dawn of a new era for live video,” Josh Elman, a partner at Greylock Partners, wrote in a blog post Thursday.
With the newness of live-video streaming, some analysts said it was too early to tell if the apps will be the next big social media craze.
The new Periscope app is currently available only on iOS and allows people to broadcast live video, interact on the video with messages and hearts, replay the videos and follow users.
“A picture may be worth a thousand words, but live video can take you someplace and show you around,” Periscope wrote in a blog post.
The companies are also trying to separate themselves from traditional social media businesses.
“Live video over social graphs generates new emotions and feelings that are different from those on existing social networks,” Meerkat wrote in a blog post.
Twitter confirmed earlier this month that it purchased Periscope for an undisclosed amount. Several news agencies though, citing sources familiar with the deal, reported it was for slightly less than $100 million.
Competition between Meerkat and Periscope then started to heat up when Twitter limited Meerkat’s access to data about its users.
A Twitter spokeswoman said Thursday that the company had nothing else to add beyond what was published in Periscope’s blog post.
Contact Queenie Wong at 408-920-2706. Follow her at Twitter.com/QwongSJ.
