PERISCOPE UP!

It’s not often we have the chance to test drive a new app the moment it’s released. We missed the boat with so many of them–Instagram, Vine, Meerkat. So when we saw that Twitter had just released Periscope, its live video streaming app, we jumped on in an attempt to get ahead of the curve for once.

What we found was…well,  a lot of people doing what we were doing: testing it out by filming their dogs, or their office, or their kids, or talking into their front facing camera. It’s fascinating to see these early baby steps, before the platform has thrown up any “stars” or anything has gone viral.

Of course, Periscope seems ripe for misuse, and we assume that it’s only a matter of hours before the network is chock a-block with all kinds of kinky stuff we shouldn’t be watching. Stay tuned for a Buzzfeed story on the first live robbery to be “periscoped“ (see, we don’t even have an official word for it yet!) or the first couple do do the nasty while sharing it with every one of their Twitter followers. About five minutes ago, we saw some guy take a pee, so things seem to be off to a grand start.

Will Periscope take over the mantle that Meerkat assumed only last week? Who can say? This is social media, baby: things move fast. Who knows if either platform will even survive the two minutes it will take us to finish this post?

EDIT - Well, that was quick. Ten minutes after we posted the above, a building collapsed in NYC’s East Village and Periscope became a go-to place for people to share video of the scene. Not at all the kind of viral event we were hoping for.

Are You Watching?

This being America and all, we figured it was only a matter of time before someone took the NSA scandal and figured out a way to make money from it. But we’re pleased that the creators of new iOS app TouchTone seem to have their priorities straight: while we’re sure they’d like to turn a profit, they seem most concerned with teaching a lesson.

TouchTone perfectly illustrates the dangers of domestic surveillance by making the user complicit in it: to do well at the game, you have to spy on your (fictional) neighbors. The directions have a disturbing Orwellian tone—“The innocent have nothing to hide”—and the graphics are pure “24”-style tech. This is an example of a game in which the premise and design actually serve an idea beyond simply garnering buzz—a rare thing in the tech world these days.

Magic Emotions

So we saw this Wired video review of Magic, the new text-based delivery start-up in San Francisco, and felt conflicting emotions.

On the one hand, Magic feels like another example of the cheapening of labor in America, a trend that is turning the country into a high-tech luxury hotel where vast armies of room servants cater to the whims of a lucky few, all for low wages with zero job security. It feels entitled and elitist, like Google’s bus service or that time those tech guys tried to reserve space in a public park.

On the other hand, how cool is it that you can text a stranger and have them turn up at your door an hour later with a Mexican wrestler’s mask? It’s the kind of thing that would have blown our 8-year-old, lucha libra-obsessed mind.

So, like we said: emotions.