How To Develop an App Like Periscope?

Live video streaming apps have won the Internet flash-likely. Capturing and broadcasting live videos have never been so easy. Sharing great moments with your nearest and dearest, virtually attending important educating and business events and even getting medical consultation online – all this is available for owners and users of live streaming products.

Periscope – a flagship service in the industry – was launched in March 2015 and was acquired by Twitter straight away, having triggered the chain of the project’s demand and success.

Recently Periscope has resumed 200 million of broadcasts created at the service. With that, over 110 years of live videos are every day. Just think of these figures. Amazing results for a startup that’s been on the market for 1 year, don’t you think?

How to Build Live Streaming App like Periscope?

Since the technology is only picking up its speed, you have a chance to become a pioneer in your selected niche and build such one-of-a-kind application for your community.

We have discovered a keen interest in this technology due to increased number of requests for development of Periscope clones and other live streaming based solutions. This egged us on making this topic loud and simple in terms of operation and cost.

So Why Does Live Streaming Matter?

Live streaming is not a fad anymore, but rather a technology that sets new standards of communication, service and marketing. Why building livestreaming app like periscope is an advanced step for many startups? There are 3 reasons at least:

1. Live streaming is finally available to everyone. Users don’t need heavy or expensive equipment. Just a device with a webcam and microphone and reliable Internet connection.

2. Live streaming is multisided. The technology of live streaming can bring you customers and fans in almost any sphere of your business.

3. Live streaming erases the boundaries, raises trust, inspires and connects people.

Where Can I Apply This Technology As An Entrepreneur?

Many companies have been successfully using the technology for their purposes. Depending on the type of your business, you may use live streaming technology in many ways:

• For representation and promotion of your product or service;

• For serving specific professions, like online medical consultation etc.;

• For enlightening on latest news and making live announcements and messages;

• For conduction of seminars and conferences of any kind;

• For sporting events’ broadcasting;

• For giving online consultations (medical assistance);

• For insurance claim damage reporting;

• For the purposes citizen journalism (crime-fighting etc.);

• Etc.

Regardless of your purpose and niche, we are ready to build an end-to-end mobile live-streaming solution for you, which would serve your business right.

Benefits of Livestream App like Periscope:

• Wider audiences. While all recipient needs is an Internet connection, webcasting gives you a great opportunity to reach hardly any person from any corner of the globe.

• Content urgency. Just like breaking news broadcast on TV, you give people the opportunity to receive the freshest information.

• Reduced costs. When you create a traditional event, you need to spend some sum on arrangements, like premises, traveling costs, meals, etc. With live stream technology, you don’t need all this.

• Increased revenue. Webcasting technologies may improve people’s productivity and help your company achieve high results with less effort.

• Increased engagement. Set up your video server so that your audience may give real-time feedback and your cooperation will be dramatically enhanced.

Features of Live Streaming Apps

Periscope has the following essential features:

1. Live streaming. This is the essence here, so if you want to make an android app like periscope, you need to know how to deliver fast and smooth streaming to its viewers. For this purposes, Periscope utilizes GPUImage – a framework designed for processing of video frames using Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). It lets you apply customized filters and effects to images and videos and provides Periscope with nearly real-time streaming of high quality.

2. Map view. People all over the world are able to create and share videos, thus, they also share their geographic location. Geolocation feature allows viewers to find any stream on the map in a few seconds. If we speak about Periscope, it relies upon native Apple maps.

3. Real-time messaging. Part of the excitement disappears when sharing an important moment, we can’t give and receive instant feedback. That’s why instant messaging is so important for a periscope clone. Messages emerge at the bottom of the screen and move upwards while the video is playing.

4. Animations. Messaging is cool, but animated interface is aspired by many users, too. The animation in Periscope includes flying hearts for liking videos, map animation for selecting the stream on the map and animated gradients in the navigation toolbar.

5. Replays: Video broadcasts on Periscope can be saved and replayed for up 24 hours after the broadcast took place.

5. Downloading streams. Periscope supports YouTube auto-upload, so after finishing your Periscope broadcast, you can save it to your camera roll and share it with a wider audience.

6. Twitter integration: You can connect to Twitter (no wonder considering it’s owned by it) to share the stream with your friends and followers, as well as to find other broadcasters to follow based on who you follow on Twitter.

7. Back winding. You can forward/rewind live streams, which is useful for situations when you come late to the event. In this case, you may go back to see what you missed and then get back to live speed.

Apart from providing the key features, Periscope has recently introduced and is currently testing the following functions:

• Stream saving. Up to now users have been able to save their streams for 24 hours only (if they even chose that option). A new beta version solves this issue and will help users save streams and keep them in-app as long as it is needed.

• Search functionality, which will allow users to find live streams and saved broadcasts, using hashtags

• A feature that will let users exchange info between a phone and DJI Drone while a live-stream is ongoing.

Other Features You May Implement

Some of the above will help you achieve the best app customization and stand out from the crowd with your product.

• Choosing the quality of the video. It is fine to be able to choose among video quality options in order to boost app’s popularity. This will allow wider audiences to use the service, including people with various indices of Internet connection and speed.

• Photo Gallery integration with Instagram, Flickr etc.

• Google integrated Event Calendar.

Who Else? Competition in The Field

Meerkat is one of the key Periscope’s competitors, which hit the market earlier than the latter one. It allows conducting only public live events with the possibility to review the stream later on. It is easier to sign up with it, but the interface is a bit more cluttered than that of a Periscope. The app is free and is available for both Android and iPhone devices.

Livestream is another free live streaming app that gained popularity among video stream lovers. It has more characteristics of a social network rather than just a streaming service. Among its partners are numerous TV networks, sports leagues, so it’s easy to find an appropriate live event for the productive and cozy evening. Your Livestream account may be connected with Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

How to Make a Live Streaming App Work at User’s Device?

Mobile broadcasting is going beyond entertainment and social media. Be assured that live streaming technology can be implemented in various types of devices, including desktop PC, set-top boxes, game consoles, smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

We at Erminesoft use live streaming app for greeting our colleagues and clients when streaming our morning stand-up meetings. It’s great our clients can feel like attending our meetings, while being far away. We find it useful and exciting, and we would be happy to help you find a good use of this technology in your startup.

Live Streaming App Development Cost

Wondering about the cost to build an iPhone app like periscope? Keep in mind that the resulting price will depend on:

• Selected platform(s);

• Number and complexity of selected features we discussed above;

• Need in custom branding and functionality;

• Time limit, within which you wish to go to the market;

• Existing pieces of work you may already have.

Detailed cost analysis can be found in our infographics