Twitter Live raises questions about Twitter’s other live-streaming product, Periscope

For the second time this week, a company that owns one live-streaming video product has released a second. Twitter, which owns live-streaming app Periscope, has added the ability for people to broadcast live streams within its own app, the company announced on Wednesday. That follows Facebook-owned Instagram adding live-streaming on Monday for US users of its app to match the live-streaming feature in Facebook’s own app. But a major difference between Facebook–Instagram and Twitter–Periscope is the fact that Facebook’s and Instagram’s live-streaming features actually differ. Facebook broadcasts can be archived so people can see the streams after they’re no longer live, whereas Instagram’s live streams disappear once the broadcast ends. Meanwhile, Twitter Live and Periscope are the same product in separate apps. As on Periscope, people can start a live stream on Twitter. As on Periscope — which lets people syndicate their live streams to Twitter — viewers on Twitter can tune in, post comments and send floating hearts to signal their enjoyment. Even more to the point, Twitter’s native live-streaming is powered by Periscope, though people aren’t required to have Periscope installed or have registered a Periscope account to use it.