Thoughts on the #391binge and my experiment with Periscope
The binge that we did as a class was an experiment in the possibilities of group viewing, so I deicided to perform my experiment: expanding the radius of our group through the app Periscope.
Periscope is a livestreaming tool for Twitter which allows you to create a broadcast of your phone’s camera. My intent was to use this as a way to allow people to check up on the broadcast if they weren’t there, and to capture some of the better reactions of the room.
Things I Quickly Learned About Periscope
- There really is no ideal way to set up a phone to watch a screen projected on the other side of a wall. The sound is distorted and it’s difficult to hold it in place.
- Live video takes a lot of battery, and so my phone needed to be plugged in for the duration, which adds another logistical hassle.
- People (especially before the alcohol came) are generally pretty quiet and respectful, meaning that funny banter is hard to capture on film.
- My aca-twitter is still but a fledgling, and thus has a relatively low follower count and digital footprint.
The result of these factors? I was not on anybody’s radar — for the majority of the binge, I had max. 2 viewers but mostly none at all.
Interface Specificity
The immediate lesson to take from this is one in terms of interfaces: Periscope is just not an ideal way to share the experience of group-binge viewing. There’s simply too much blurry footage filling the space between occasional laughs and jokes you can’t properly make out.
What did turn out to be an excellent interspace was the group live-tweet. This allowed us to fire off zippy one-liners to whoever felt like looking, and to respond to each-other in kind.
There was also room for academic work to be done, both on the show itself:
And on the experience of the binge-viewing itself:
And finally, even those who were away could join in, as Stevie did:
It is worth thinking about how the academic context of the binge changed things — it made it a unique kind of experience where everyone had an incentive to join the conversation. This structure ultimately meant that the twitter interface accomplished everything I was aiming to do with Periscope, it crystallized people’s reactions and allowed those outside of the room to join in.
Second Screens
This viewing also featured many second screens — for me, with both my phone to record and my laptop to tweet, I had three screens. In these specific circumstances, I think the second screens allowed us to communicate without talking over the show, and see/consider other people’s insights. In a way, this mimics the experience of people livetweeting events, except with all of us in the same room.
That said, this specific experience was heavily reinforced by its academic context. Whether people would share the same kind of connection outside of this context is something that could be investigated.
Conclusions
Overall, my use of Periscope didn't really accomplish much on its own. That said, I now know that Periscope is not a great tool for passive viewing — perhaps I will experiment with it in a more active environment. However, the academic livetweet did a great job of sharing what was going on inside our binge-submarine
Post Script
Rebecca Alter also did a periscope, and had different experience, where she did have viewers, but unfortunately they were rude to her: yet another reminder of how frustrating the internet can be. Whether it was her higher follower count, female name, or more effective branding that led to this response, I cannot say.
Embarrassing Note
I had some bad information about the way Periscope works and thought it saved video — which it does, but only for 24 hours, during which time you have to save it yourself if you want to keep it. In lieu of several hours of extraordinarily dry footage you can at least see the different segments/names I gave to the broadcast due to technical difficulties and other breaks.
