Twitter has bought live streaming service Periscope. The company has not revealed how much it paid for the service, but it’s thought that they could have paid up to $100 million for the service. Twitter say they bought the company quietly back in January.
Periscope used Twitter to post: “You may have heard some news: It involves a blue bird. #YouCanGuessTheRest #WeJoinedTheFlockInJanuary #AreWeUsingThisRight #IsThisThingOn”. Twitter itself responded by saying: “Excited to officially welcome @periscopeco to the Twitter team. Can’t wait for everyone to see what they’ve built!”
Periscope is focused on video streaming. Its first mobile app is still being tested in beta. Twitter also bought SnappyTV last year, a startup that provides real-time video footage editing tools. Twitter has been adding an increasing amount of video features to its service. Users can now including up to 30 seconds of video in tweets, leading to less reliance on services including YouTube.
Micro-blogging giant Twitter claims to have 288 million monthly active users, with 500 million Tweets being sent across the service each day. It supports 33 languages and is also the owner of Vine, the service that allows users to post short-form videos lasting six seconds or less.
