Official: Twitter Has Acquired Periscope Streaming Video App

Postscript: Twitter confirmed its acquisition of Periscope, a startup working on a live-streaming app, Friday, March 13, via a tweet from Kevin Weil, Twitter’s head of product:

Excited to officially welcome @periscopeco to the Twitter team. Can't wait for everyone to see what they've built! https://t.co/6eAJjpXmaS

— Kevin Weil 🇺🇸 (@kevinweil) March 13, 2015

Periscope broke the news minutes before on its own Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/periscopeco/status/576429747057504257

Here’s our original post:

Looks like Twitter’s video revolution will be … live streamed.

According the multiple reports, Twitter has scooped up Periscope, a startup that enables people to stream live video from their mobile devices.

Periscope is still in private beta and hasn’t announced a product, but reportedly is working on an app similar to Meerkat, the live-streaming app that has recently captured the attention of tech journalists and other tech types on Twitter. Many have wondered whether Twitter would buy Meerkat to add live video to its roster of features.

Instead, the company has picked up Periscope, according Business Insider, Recode and BloombergBusiness. Business Insider, which first reported the news, said the deal was completed several weeks ago.

A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment.

Twitter has been making a strong push into video of late, in January giving consumers the ability to record and upload clips of up to 30-second video from the mobile app. But Twitter video and its six-second Vine app don’t provide the immediacy of live streaming, which given the viral rise of Meerkat seems like a missing piece of the Twitter ecosystem.

Many journalists supplemented their coverage of today’s Apple Watch event by streaming live via Meerkat and it’s easy to envision that easy access to publishing live video on Twitter being a popular feature.