Sometimes its great to be able to share your moments with others, be it a birthday celebration, a walk in the woods with you dog, a day out on the beach, or even showing off tips on putting on make up. Social media has made live streaming nowadays a breeze, just open an app and press record, and millions of viewers from around the world can log in and see what you are up to. I guess the concept of sharing your moments started with Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) back in 2002, when you could message a photo to each other. Following from that we started using social media platforms or live video chats. Live streaming brings the latter together allow you to stream what you are doing to…..anyone really.
So lets dive in on the live stream apps that are available that are more popular here in Hong Kong.
17
The first I heard about 17 was from watching a group of lecherous male colleagues gathering around to watch a live feed. Why? You find out as soon as you use it. 17 as the name implies requires you to be at least 17 years of age to use, how it tries to enforce this, I have no idea. I guess if you log in via your social media account (eg Facebook), it’ll figure it out from the date of birth you entered. Developed by machiPoPo, Inc 17 is taking Asia by storm and you’ll find users from Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc. You can sort the live streams by popularity of how many people are currently viewing it, and you can bet your life on seeing the more prettier girls being at the top.
Whilst watching the live streams you can live text them and, annoyingly, send heart shaped icons that float up the right hand side of the screen which everybody else can see. One of the ‘perks’ of 17 is that as you stream, with more and more viewers you actually get royalty. Royalty is paid out once a $100 is reached (I”m guessing USD here).
On starting a few streams, connections were reached after just a few seconds. The picture quality was surpirsingly good, and the same goes for the sound quality. Unfortunately 17 is not linked to any other social media platforms, so you will not receive notifications of when a user starts streaming.
Periscope
Periscope is known more internationally, chances are you might even have it installed on your smartphone, so it has a much much larger user base. Imagine 17 on steroids, and thats exactly what Periscope is. The interface between the 2 is uncannily similar, even down to the hearts you can send to the streamer, that you do wonder which of these came first.
One of the biggest advatages of using Periscope is that it can auto announce your live stream on your Twitter account, making this a very useful tool for vloggers, and for those newsworthy moments, meaning those viral moments can spread even faster. With this Twitter link, any of the followers you have on Twitter will get a notification whenever you start streaming. You also auto upload the stream which you have recorded onto your YouTube account. All these functions are availble with just a few simple clicks.
At the beginning of the year Periscope also announced that you can now not only use the cameras on your smartphone, but also from a GoPro which you have paired to your iPhone.
If you happen to be in Hong Kong this weekend and you’l like to know more about Periscope, there will be an event on Fri 11 March 19:00-20:00 at the IFC Apple Store. It will be hosted by Andrew Leyden who’s Twitter account @PenguinSix gained 30,000 followers. He will also demonstrate using Periscope on iPhone 6s, interacting with users and live-streaming the view outside IFC mall.
At the moment, this is the live streaming app favoured by the FunkyKit HK team, but I am trying to get them to start use the new kid on the block……
After trials in the US, Facebook finally released live broadcasting at the beginning of the year, called Facebook Live. Being intergrated into Facebook, unlike Periscope it does not need to push the live stream to other social media platforms. Notifictations of when you start streaming are sent to those that have subscribed to your to your streams, and like any other content you post up on Facebook, you can set the privacy level of your streams, be it to the general public or just friends.
With the streams being stored on Facebook you have the option to edit the recordings, and repost them for a greater audience.
