Twitter’s livestreaming video app Periscope launches audio-only broadcasts

Periscope, Twitter’s livestreaming video app, rolled out a brand new feature today that brings a new type of broadcast to the platform.

When updating Periscope to the latest version, the livestreaming video app now allows users to create audio-only broadcasts. The latest version description reads:

Ever want to just talk with your audience on Periscope? In this update you can go live with audio only, so your viewers can hear (but not see) you. To try out an audio-only broadcast, tap on the new microphone icon on the broadcast setup screen. You can select this option before you start your broadcast, or at any time while you’re live!

In a blog post, Twitter engineer Richard Plom went a bit further into how audio-only broadcasts came to be. According to Plom, Perscope users have long requested the feature and had previously created their own ad hoc workaround by covering the camera lense of the phone when broadcasting. During #HackWeek at Twitter, the development team got together and made this happen in one work week.

With this update, anyone can login to Periscope and stream and audio-only broadcast to their audience while still taking advantage of Periscope’s hearts, chatroom, and other interactive features. In place of video, the app creates an animated audiowave visual that renders to match the audio being broadcast by the streamer.

While not quite podcasting in its method of distribution, Periscope’s addition of an audio-only broadcasting feature due to user demand shows just how popular online audio shows and series’ continue to become.

Even as technology continues to improve which allows for even higher quality video uploads and livestreams, a growing audience of internet users prefer to strip away those visual features and just consume content as a podcast.