GoPro live streams coming to another app: Twitter’s Periscope

Two struggling tech companies, GoPro and Twitter, on Tuesday announced a partnership around live video that’s meant to spark more usage for both businesses.

The Twitter-owned Periscope video app will now recognize when a GoPro Hero4 silver or black edition is connected to an iPhone. Periscope users can share live to the world whatever their GoPro and their iPhone camera are capturing, with viewers able to toggle between the two shots. The stream can be shared to Twitter, where it will also be viewable.

ESPN will use the new feature at the X Games action-sports event in Aspen, Colo., starting Wednesday, GoPro said.

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Last summer, Meerkat, an upstart app focused on live video that’s still trying to find wide adoption, also introduced GoPro live-feed support. It tapped software the cameramaker makes freely available. And the Livestream app announced GoPro streaming in 2014.

But Periscope’s 10 million users and Twitter’s 320 million users make the Periscope deal potentially more fruitful. GoPro is suffering from slowing sales, while Twitter has been under pressure to increase the number of users faster.

A spokesman for GoPro didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment about whether any money exchanged hands. Twitter spokeswoman Brielle Villablanca said only that Periscope “worked closely with GoPro to create this feature as we felt that the integration would mutually benefit our users” and that it is not an exclusive partnership.

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YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat are also encouraging users to submit more live or close-to-live footage. None has a GoPro feature.

Chat with me on Twitter @peard33

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