Twitter’s live streaming service Periscope has added a new way to watch broadcasts on the web. It’s called Couch Mode, and is basically just an endless stream of different broadcasts. This way you can sit on your couch and just watch Periscope for as long as you want.
The streams are determined by how well videos are viewed. Periscope itself isn’t hand-picking them or anything, at least at this point, though they might want to consider it because it’s very random and not particularly great for the viewing experience at this point.
LIVE on #Periscope: From @periscopeco HQ, introducing Couchmode + @icofyre! https://t.co/UqLGRuLHex
— Bill Couch (@couch) August 3, 2015
Still, it’s a start at what could be a key feature for Periscope going forward. While it is only for the web version at this point, it can still be beamed to televisions via Chromecast, Apple TV, etc.
Periscope needs more ways to surface interesting content for users, so this is at least one more way for people to discover broadcasts. The company says it’s inspired by Vimeo’s couch mode.
You can access Periscope Couch Mode by going to periscope.tv/couchmode. You can jump forward to the next broadcast by hitting the right arrow key on your keyboard. You can also hide comments and hearts by hitting the H key.
You can even add a URL parameter to make couch mode automatically jump to the next video after a certain amount of time. For example, for 30 seconds, you would add “?d=30” to the URL.
✨ https://t.co/rFapwhHFZe ✨
• Jump broadcasts with the ➡️ key
• Add ?d=30 to auto-advance after 30 seconds
• H key toggles hearts + comments
— Bill Couch (@couch) August 3, 2015
According to Periscope’s Bill Couch (yep), you can watch broadcasts 24/7 if you want to. It just goes on endlessly.
According to Couch, Periscope is messing around with different ways to figure out which broadcasts to show. It’s basically just a preview of the feature at this point, which is why there hasn’t been a formal announcement by way of the Periscope blog yet.
Periscope is still very young, but it’s already made some significant improvements. For example, they recently made it so that users don’t have to be on their mobile devices to watch streams that have concluded.
Via TheNextWeb
Image via Periscope