Who hasn’t wished they could fly and see the world through a bird’s point of view?
Drones, which are essentially flying cameras, have made it possible to easily capture this kind of footage, and Twitter’s video broadcasting service is taking this to a new level. On Monday, Twitter-owned (TWTR) Periscope announced that users can now link up their accounts to their DJI drones to broadcast video captured by its camera.
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As Periscope explains in a blog post about the new feature, while broadcasting users will be able to switch between iPhone cameras, drone cameras, and even GoPro (GPRO) cameras. Users will also be able to draw on their drone-generated footage using Periscope’s new Sketch feature, the company adds. Periscope announced a similar partnership with GoPro back in January.
DJI, a Shenzhen-based company, is arguably the largest manufacturer of recreational drones in the world.
Additionally, Periscope is making it easier for users to find these video broadcasts through an update to its search feature. Now, users can search for broadcasts based on categories, such as “GoPros and Drones,” in addition to searching for accounts to follow. Users can also add topics to their own broadcasts so they can surface in search results.
Last month, Facebook (FB), which has been heavily pushing its own live video broadcasting service, released a software tool with which developers can build their own apps using Facebook’s Live Video service. During the company’s annual developer conference in San Francisco, CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated the new software tool when a drone flew on stage while broadcasting the drone’s camera footage to a large screen via Facebook’s Live Video. It’s still lacking a consumer-facing feature like that of Periscope, but presumably, Facebook hopes drone companies will soon put the tool to use.
Periscope is also taking a page from Facebook’s live video book and shifting away from videos being short-lived. After introducing a hashtag last week to let users permanently save their video broadcasts, Periscope now says that videos will soon be saved automatically and permanently by default. Users can, of course, also switch back to having their videos disappear after 24 hours as they did before.