The best iPhone app of the year isn't what you'd probably expect. According to Apple, it's not Facebook, Instagram, or even Snapchat.
Apple's "most visionary, inventive, and irresistible" iPhone app of 2015 is Periscope, according to the app Store's editors, which lets you create a live video stream with your iPhone's camera and instantly broadcast it to the world. Tech Insider recently selected Periscope as one of the 100 best apps in the world as well.
Why all the buzz around a livestreaming app?
Periscope has only been available since March of 2015, and it was quickly bought by Twitter for $86 million after launching on the iPhone. Now available on Android devices as well as the iPhone, Periscope has been downloaded over 10 million times and is used all over the world.
There are obvious use cases for a video broadcasting app: Jimmy Fallon streams on Periscope frequently from behind the scenes of The Tonight Show and comedians like Jim Gaffigan and Chris Hardwick use it to directly communicate with fans.
Periscope has also been used in pretty profound ways for journalistic purposes.
Reporter Paul Ronzheimer recently used Periscope to document his journey with a group of Syrian refugees from Greece to Germany. “In Germany we have been having a big discussion about the intensity of media coverage of this story. But on Periscope, everybody could see it was live,” he told The Guardian. “It happened. No one was cutting it, no one was putting a two- or three-minute piece together after we filmed it. And for Germans, it was really good to understand the problems the refugees have been facing.”
When the recent terrorist attack in Paris happened, Periscope struggled to keep its servers running as an influx of people shared broadcasts of what was happening on the city's streets.
Periscope was born out of its CEO’s frustration with the media’s coverage of the Gezi protests in Turkey, so the app's roots are clearly in sharing a unique, personal perspective of what’s happening. With Meerkat and Facebook's entrance into livestreaming, Periscope is leading a market that's getting crowded. But for now, it's enjoying time in the sun.
"When we launched Periscope this past March, we had no idea what to expect," the app's team said in a Medium post. "We certainly hoped people would like what we had built, and would find value in using it. But we never expected our idea would be supported this much, or grow this fast. We certainly never expected to receive such high honors as this."
—Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) December 9, 2015
