Periscope engineer explains why streams aren't always live

There's no question that live video has exploded in popularity since the launch of Meerkat and Twitter-owned Periscope. But, as we've learned from hiccups at Meerkat, bringing live video to thousands of people at once presents an extraordinary technical challenge for engineers.

But it turns out, the way Periscope's engineering team addressed this is more obvious than you may think. Periscope’s live streams — particularly more popular ones with thousands of users — aren’t always live, the app’s software engineer for Android said Thursday. Speaking at Airbnb’s OpenAir conference, Sara Haider explained how the company uses an “artificial delay” to ensure that streams don’t get overloaded while keeping comments in sync. Read more...