Up Periscope! Twitter buys yet to surface video start-up

10 Mar 2015

Twitter’s buying spree continues with the news that the company has acquired a start-up called Periscope that hasn’t formally launched its first product yet.

It is believed that Twitter may have paid as much as US$50m for the start-up which enables video streaming from smartphones.

The acquisition is understood to have closed a month ago. The reason it’s called Periscope is because it allows users to “explore the world through someone else’s eyes.”

The company was founded by Keyvon Bekpour and Joe Bernstein who were behind Terriblyclever, a company acquired by Blackboard.

Periscope’s app is still in beta mode and has yet to be submitted to the App Store.

The app lets users stream what’s happening around them in real-time. It is similar to another popular app called Meerkat that allows users to live-stream what they are doing.

The move echoes Twitter’s acquisition of Vine in 2012 which was also in closed beta when the social networking giant moved in.

Twitter is a Silicon Republic Featured Employer, comprised of top tech companies hiring now

Periscope image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com