Melburnians flock to Fed Square for the Rio Opening
Check out my first Periscope, a live-stream of the Rio Opening Games 2016 at Federation Square in Melbourne’s CBD.
Melburnians flock to Fed Square for the Rio Opening
My original plan for a newsworthy story was a run for international students, organised by the AFIS (Australian Federation of International Students). The event was titled the ‘Amazing Race’, and was widely advertised across the organisation’s website and Facebook page. The race was was set to begin at 10am at Federation Square on Saturday August 6, and I planned to live stream the kick-off using Periscope.
I arrived early to Federation Square on that Saturday morning. Looking around, there were no students to be seen. Or event. Or stall. Trying to make the best of a compromising situation, I decided to live-stream the footage of the Opening Ceremony of the Rio Olympics broadcasted on the screen in Federation Square. I’m very much aware that the Opening Ceremony is not particularly newsworthy as filmed through Periscope. What I thought was interesting, however, was the public who flocked to Federation Square to view the games. Even if they had not planned to sit and watch, many people stopped as they were walking past to view the event.
A characteristic of Periscope is that broadcasts are available to watch for 24 hours. This is a great feature for the current news cycle, as newsworthy content is posted live as it happens, and simply disappears once it’s no longer at its height of its importance. Lindsay Sutton, group director of social strategy at DigitasLBi U.S, in an interview for Digiay, said “live, topical, real-time content still works best on Twitter and, by extension, Periscope”.
This feature would have been ideal for the race I planned to live-stream, as viewers from Melbourne and around the world could have watched the start of the race in all its supposed glory. Once the race was over, there would have been no relevance and therefore the video’s disappearance would have gone unnoticed.
While Periscope’s main feature has its benefits, there is also an inherent downside. Having broadcasts live for just 24 hours means there’s no news archive. In May of this year Periscope announced live-streams could be saved by adding the ‘#save’ to the title. Periscope CEO and co-founder Kayvon Beykpour said “it was time to evolve beyond the restraint of 24 hours and allow this content to stay in the public record”.
I was not aware of this at the time of broadcasting, as the hashtag had to be placed in the title pre-recording. After a two hour software update at midnight, my laptop decided to activate screen recording. I was able to record the video with the viewer pop-ups and the satisfying love hearts by connecting my iPhone to the computer.
Periscope is making advancements in the popularity of video live streaming. Periscope head of business operations Alex Khoshnevissan said “we need to continue to create a tool that empowers people to tell their stories”. With journalists using the app to facilitate story telling, there’s no doubt the platform’s relevance remains.
