‘Periscope’ And ‘Facebook Live’ Updates; Twitter And Facebook Race To Livestream Finish

Twitter and Facebook have been going head to head with their respective livestream features since they came out. With “Periscope” for the former and “Facebook Live” for the latter, each social media giant has been trying to one-up each other through bigger and better additions. For this round, Twitter opted to allow “Periscope” broadcasts to be embedded in the social media platform itself and in other places on the web. Facebook decided that to increase livestream durations for its part, doubling the limit.

According to Mashable, Twitter announced that livestreams with “Periscope” can now be broadcasted in places outside the app and website. Basically, Twitter users can now see “Periscope” videos that are included in Tweets instead of just the URL, which was how it was before.

This allows the reach of the livestream app to go further since not every user of Twitter is using “Periscope” or know that it even exists. Speaking of “Periscope,” the app is also getting some new features, including auto-play and clip previews. The former is pretty self-explanatory as it essentially plays videos automatically in the app, while the latter shows key parts of the video via a quick slideshow.

Right now, these features are only available for the Android version of the app, but “Periscope” assured iOS users that they will be getting the added features soon.

As for “Facebook Live’s” new features, the social network chose to make the maximum amount of time to stream live at four hours instead of two. As USA Today reports, the feedback from the users who have tried the livestreaming platform has encouraged Facebook to release “Live” to all of its 1.65 billion users. The rising importance of the feature to record and stream important events live was enough to merit the longer stream time as well, particularly in light of its role during significant political developments of late.