Twitter-owned live video streaming app Periscope has received an update that brings a number of new features to the table.
On July 21, Twitter announced a few changes to some of Periscope's features and confirmed that more functionality will be added to the app in the coming weeks.
Twitter revealed that a new feature called Highlights will automatically generate a small trailer, which will include some of the interesting moments of a broadcast.
The Global Feed and Watch Tab have also been refreshed and viewers will now see broadcasts in an immersive and large format. Live broadcasts will autoplay (without sound) as soon as the app is launched.
Currently, the latest autoplay feature is available only for Android version of the app. Periscope users on iOS will have to wait another few weeks to get the feature.
Periscope broadcasts can now be embedded in webpages and watched anywhere in the world. Following the update, users will also have the option to embed an entire broadcast in a broadcast.
"We've seen incredible growth on Periscope during the past year," said Periscope CEO and co-founder Kayvon Beykpour. "It's hard to keep up with all of the live content shared by Periscope broadcasters around the world. So we built a way to easily watch automatically generated highlights of each broadcast. We've also made it easy for publishers to embed playable broadcasts anywhere on the web."
Periscope is available as a free download from the Google Play Store and Apple Play Store. The Android version of the app is compatible with devices running on Android 4.4 KitKat or above.
The iOS version of Periscope can on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch running on iOS 8.1 or later. The app weighs 29.9 MB and is available in a number of languages including English, Hindi, German, Japanese, Spanish, Arabic, Thai, Chinese and more.
In March this year, Periscope celebrated its first birthday and confirmed it had over 200 million broadcasts, which is a big milestone for the company.
"We're proud of what we've built together and we're excited to share just how far we've come. As of today, over 200 million broadcasts have been created on Periscope and over 110 years of live video are watched every day on iOS and Android," says Periscope.
Even though Periscope is quite small in comparison to YouTube, the latest update and addition of new features may help the app to attract more users in the near term.
