Some Twitter users are seeing a new button in their "Compose new Tweet" windows today.
A Periscope button!
Evidently, Twitter really, really wants you to live-stream video from your tweets — and not from Facebook, which is also pushing hard into live video.
And so the company is experimenting with a new design that integrates its Periscope live-streaming app directly into the Twitter platform, eliminating the need to open the Periscope app separately. Some Android users began seeing the design back in May. Today, others are seeing it on their iPhones.
[If you don't have the Periscope app, the button prompts you to download it so you can start live-streaming.]
Twitter acquired Periscope about a year ago, and live streaming seemed a good fit with its breaking news and "of the moment" culture. But recent Facebook's success with live video streaming has upped the ante in what's fast becoming a very competitive space; a woman laughing alone in a Chewbacca mask garnered millions of viewers and became the new symbol of modern entertainment.
Part of Facebook's success with live streaming has come from its efforts to push the feature on users (a red alert notice appears at the top of your screen when someone you follow on Facebook goes live). In order to get us regularly using and watching live streams, social media platforms kinda need to shove them down our throats a little. And that's exactly what Twitter has done today. What better way to get Periscope users to live stream on Twitter than by putting a Periscope button in a piece of real estate as high-visibility as the "Compose new Tweet" window?
Enjoy your live streams, everyone. Just make sure not to accidentally hit the button when you're tweeting from the toilet!
UPDATE
A rep for Twitter told BuzzFeed News, “a few weeks ago we rolled out a ‘Go Live’ button in Twitter to a small percentage of Android users. We’re beginning to roll this out to a small group of iOS users. Over time, everyone will have the ability to start a Periscope broadcast from Twitter."