Periscope
Credit: Image from Periscope

When Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao faced up to each other at the MGM Grand last weekend, some people paid up to $100 (£65.60) to see the "fight of the century" live on pay-per-view.

Meanwhile, millions of others watched the match free on Periscope.

Other than Mayweather's victory, Twitter's new livestreaming app became one of the biggest talking points of the event.

Opinions were divided over whether the app had breached the copyright of HBO and CBS Showtime, which were jointly showing the fight.

CNN declared Periscope "the new Napster," while Mashable's tech correspondent Christina Warren wrote how she "saw the future" after watching the livestream on her phone.


Dick Costolo, Twitter's CEO, stoked the furore further when after the match he tweeted "And the winner is... Periscope".

However, speaking at yesterday's Collision conference in Las Vegas – just a few miles from where the fight took place – Joel Lunenfeld, vice president of global brand strategy at Twitter, nixed any notion that Periscope had fallen foul of copyright laws.

"We comply with all the copyright laws," he said. "This is a new medium. We focus on the opportunity, and we know that there's always going to be things to figure out, and we're committed to doing that."

Twitter received around 60 requests to take down content on Periscope, relating to 30 streams, said Lunenfeld, all of which were removed.

He added that Periscope was working with television channels such as Showtime and HBO to provide "content you can't get anywhere else" such as livestreams from Pacquiao's training room, showing his "rituals" before the fight.

"We had Vine there [at MGM Grand] too, where people were standing and giving a 360˚ view of what was going on, and then there was amazing content being produced before the fight, speculation of it, from people at the fight themselves," said Lunenfeld.

"We think that just really adds to the whole, full picture of an event."

Although it was the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight which put Periscope on the mainstream map, the app had already gained credibility with journalists like the Guardian's Paul Lewis, who used it to cover the uprising in Baltimore.

Similarly, on the same day Periscope launched there was an explosion in New York's East Village and video livestreamed through the app allowed people to see the incident "from every single angle", said Lunenfeld.

Live isn't just watching something live on TV anymore, passivelyJoel Lunenfeld, Twitter
This use-case of on-the-ground reporting is "just like the early days on Twitter," he added, "where we're constantly surprised by how people are using it".

Periscope is Twitter's latest iteration in video products, in addition to Vine's six-second loops and the launch of native Twitter video at the start of the year.

Livestreaming is shaping up to be one of the big trends in mobile apps this year, with Meerkat preceding the launch of Periscope by a few weeks and beating its rival to the Google Play store.

"Live isn't just watching something live on TV anymore, passively," said Lunenfeld.

"This whole idea of live is more about people sharing an experience together, not just that one point in time, but getting to interact with those around them.

"That's how we think about Periscope, Vine, Twitter video and redefining the live experience."



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