Content discovery for Periscope may get a whole lot easier with the launch of Stream, an app through which users can browse and find live streams on the popular, Twitter-owned service and access them in real time. New York-based startup Dextro developed the app and is simultaneously releasing a new version of its computer vision API.
What's unique about Stream is that it uses Dextro's "computer vision" platform to analyze and categorize live-streamed content in real time. Rather than relying on captions and user-generated tags, Dextro's computer vision service gathers data directly from photos and video.
Dextro is the first company to use computer vision on digital video, founder and CEO David Luan told FierceOnlineVideo.
"We basically have ability to analyze the content of videos to determine what's actually in them, so people with large collections of video content can search through and analyze videos to determine what each is about," he said. "We were the first to figure out (computer vision for) live video in real time, (which created) an awesome opportunity with live-streaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat."
Periscope's exploding popularity and its simplified interface means there are far more videos being streamed at any time than users could discover on their own.
"So far, in terms of being able to … say, watch concert streams, amateur musicians, behind the scenes in newsrooms, you can't do that on platform because there's so much new content with minimal tags," Luan said.
Stream has surfaced "tons" of interesting content so far, Luan said, from live-streamed video of the Baltimore protests, to "this one specifically about this guy's teddy bear." Its nightclubs and concerts category surfaced two secret concerts recently on the Periscope app, he noted.
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Stream's interface includes different stats such as what's currently streaming worldwide, and most-streamed videos by topic and time. (Courtesy of Stream) |
So far, Stream is available only for Periscope, and development hasn't started on a version for Meerkat yet, although Luan says they have talked about it.
While the user-focused Stream offers plenty of real-time potential analytics for marketers and brands, Dextro's computer vision API itself has interesting potential.
"From the commercial aspects we're just starting to scratch the surface," Luan said. "We're really excited to have partnerships on the new API standpoint, as well as potential partners on our pre-recorded video API."
Potential use cases for Stream and Dextro's API keep popping up: Last weekend's Mayweather-Pacquiao fight saw a huge number of illegal live streams appear on Periscope, with the provider playing whack-a-mole as it attempted to cut off as many streams as it could. While Dextro isn't in the business of finding those types of streams--"we're more focused on annotating those videos … than on a direct match that a copyright owner would use," Luan said--the platform could be a "foundational technology" for such use.
At any rate, Stream has the potential to bring some order to live-streaming's latest killer app.
For more:
- see the release
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