Twitter, the popular microblogging company is reportedly in negotiations to acquire Periscope, a live video streaming app, according to report from TechCrunch based on information from people familiar with the matter.
The report indicated that the discussion between Twitter and Periscope regarding a potential acquisition is still in the early stages, and a potential deal could be worth around $100 million.
There no additional details regarding Twitter’s potential acquisition of Periscope. The firm is co-founded Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein.
Periscope app allows users to stream video from their smart devices to their followers in real-time. Its capability is similar to Meerkat app, which relies on the communication and distributions systems of Twitter to connect users via live streaming. In other words, once a user opens its Twitter account, the app will trigger a tweet with a link to his or her real-time video stream.
There were also speculations that Twitter is interested to buy Meerkat app given its popularity. The app was launched last week. According to the Wall Street Journal, within three days, Meerkat attracted 15,000 users and steamed approximately 8,000 videos.
Commenting on the instant popularity of Meerkat app, Eden Shochat, founding partner of Aleph, an Israeli venture firm said, “This, not only traction, but market understanding, seeing this as a new kind of medium, this almost never happens.”
Users can now embed Twitter-hosted videos
Twitter recently announced that users will now be able to embed Twitter-hosted videos on any supported websites. The feature is locates under the “more” prompt.
Last month, the popular microblogging company released its first official plug-in for WordPress. The plug in offers a number of features including a one-click share button that allows visitors in automatically share posts in Twitter.
It also allows users to embed tweets on blogs and customized the color scheme of the embedded tweets to match the appearance of the website.
Twitter added two-step authentication to Digits, a service implemented a developer to improve security for users. Digits enable users to log into third-party mobile applications without using a password. The service is also added with a friend finding feature.