By Adam Dodson/reporter
Twitter’s new app has officially fulfilled Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame prophecy.
Periscope allows anyone with a Twitter account and an iPhone to broadcast a live video feed from virtually anywhere on the planet to anyone anywhere who wants to tune in and watch.
But that’s not all. It is interactive in real time. Anyone tuning into a broadcast can communicate with that person through text that appears on the screen for both the broadcaster and the rest of the audience to see.
On the day the app dropped:
I spoke with a New York stockbroker on his way into Manhattan who didn’t want to show his face but was passing out stock tips like candy.
I helped a guy pick out a six-pack of beer at the grocery store.
I snuck back inside the house with some teenager after curfew until the feed dropped when his mom turned on the living-room light.
I joined in with the mob as one broadcaster crowd-sourced ideas for what to draw on his passed-out buddy’s face (I’m not proud of that one).
I sat in with a smoking circle of people outside a bar in San Francisco posing philosophical questions and getting surprisingly deep replies.
I walked around more than a few house parties (on different continents) as people passed me and my fellow viewers around to show off the new app.
I actually interviewed an NBC affiliate news team in Cincinnati until the moment they went live for their newscast.
Since it was the most common request by viewers, I had a look inside the refrigerators of more strangers than I cared to.
And that was all in the first hour, sitting on the couch in my living room.
This thing is seriously addictive. In fact, I had to impose a self-induced intervention and haven’t used it since the app’s first week.
Living vicariously through distant strangers and interacting with them in real time while they show you a small slice of their lives is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential uses of this technology.
Periscope and whatever future applications may come about in the same vein represent a Pandora’s box of sorts. The ability to broadcast live and record for later viewing could be a useful new tool for journalists, artists, activists, teachers and emergency medical teams.
But one can also imagine how a seriously deranged person looking to gain the kind of attention and notoriety that comes from committing heinous acts can use this app.
So, while this app really is amazing and fun, it should be acknowledged as a powerful tool, and the possibilities for its use are only limited by the imagination of the broadcaster.
I must enthusiastically recommend it, though. This might be the biggest thing since YouTube.
