Twitter’s ‘Go Live’ Button To Draw Periscope Video More Into Core App Experience

Twitter is ramping up its push into live video. A “Go Live” button, which provides a one-tap navigation to Twitter’s Periscope app, is now available to some Android users in the main Twitter app. The function will roll out to all users in the future, Twitter told the Verge.

The button appears when Twitter users select to compose a tweet. They will then see a selection of media options that includes taking a photo, recording a video, choosing an image and, now, broadcasting a live video.

The move is Twitter’s latest effort to integrate Periscope more into the main Twitter experience as the company competes with Facebook’s live feature as well as apps YouNow and Stre.am. Earlier this year, Twitter made Periscope broadcast auto-play in Twitter feed. Last week, Periscope introduced a permanent save feature (previously, videos were deleted after 24 hours) and more search capabilities.

Whether Periscope will disappear as a brand remains unclear. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told USA Today earlier this month that he saw “benefits from having two really strong brands at the top of the App Stores.” Twitter acquired Periscope in January 2015 and released the app in March. Apple named Periscope “App of the Year” in 2015.

Periscope has created an active fan base. The app attracted 1.9 million daily active users last August and 10 million registered users. But Twitter has not released updated statistics on user growth. In March, Periscope said users had created more than 200 million broadcasts over the last year.

But the app could be falling in popularity, not unlike Twitter’s other brand, Vine. The average six-second “loop” count for Vines from the top 10 accounts dropped by 29 percent from May 2015 to March, according to Tubular Labs data reported by the Wall Street Journal.