Stream live video with new Twitter app

Toronto: You can turn your iPhone into a live video feed with this new app from Twitter.

The just-released app, called Periscope, allows people to livestream video from their iPhones at the touch of a button.

Periscope would be competing with Meerkat - a similar app that came out a few weeks ago. Both apps are currently only available on the iPhone.

"I was watching a guy walking down the street in Paris and I was like, oh that's pretty cool. Look at the weather in Paris," CTV Ottawa quoted a female user as saying.

Many people wonder if Periscope will catch on in the long run. As what most people are streaming right now is "pretty boring".

However, another user, a professor at the University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Business specialising in social media, felt the technology must be given some time.

He pointed out that other platforms, like YouTube, showed some pretty boring stuff at first. But then people started getting creative to attract more views.

"With this platform we may see something similar, creative livestreaming approaches that weren't possible before," the professor was quoted as saying.

Such new apps give people an opportunity to make more intimate connections.

Family members, for example, can instantly share their vacations with people back home.

One can "experience it at the same moment they experience it", so afterwards "we have a shared experience which tends to bring people closer together".