Facebook – Periscope depth

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This is the right time for Facebook to torpedo Twitter.

• Facebook’s Live Video offering which allows users to broadcast themselves to their friends and followers is being moved from just celebrities into advanced testing with real iPhone users.
• Clearly, the stage is set for this feature to be offered as just another feature within Facebook that threatens to take all of the wind from Periscope’s sails.
• Periscope is an app offered by Twitter (that it bought for $100m) that offers exactly the same function enabling video broadcasting to one’s followers.
• Live Video is also to some degree is also targeting YouTube whose original moniker was “broadcast yourself”.
• There are two criteria which will decide who wins.
  • First. How easy, fun and reliable the two services are.
  • Second. How well video broadcasting catches on outside of its traditional use of news dissemination.
• When I look at Twitter with its 320m users, I see a service that is great for disseminating news and one that is awful at communicating with your friends and associates.
• In that vein, Periscope was a great purchase as it fits exactly into what Twitter does and enhances what it is good at.
• However, from the Facebook perspective with 5x the number of active users and vastly superior usability for communication, this makes sense from enhancing engagement with the consumer.
• Many people use Facebook as a postcard service to tell their friends what they are doing and where they are.
• This enhances that but very much like video calling, it is questionable to what degree this will appeal to the consumer segment.
• Consequently, I can see video broadcasting splitting down two fault lines with news and reportage going over Twitter / Periscope and personal video broadcasting going via Facebook.
• The issue for Twitter and Periscope is reach.
• Its user base is stagnant while Facebook’s is 5x larger and still growing, albeit pretty slowly.
• This means that for reaching an audience, Facebook is likely to be a better bet and is not impossible that Facebook ends up swallowing the broadcast and news dissemination opportunity currently held by Twitter.
• I suspect that this is exactly what Facebook intends to do and its timing could not be better.
• While Twitter sits at the crossroads wondering what to do and being slowed down by a part time CEO, it is vulnerable.
• Hence, should Live Video start to get some traction, this will only compound my concerns and worries surrounding Twitter.
• Facebook remains my top long-term choice (see here) and I still think that there is plenty of room for Twitter to fall further.