There is no identity attached to messages on Yik Yak, which opens the floodgates for all kinds of flavorful talk (hookup requests are a dime a dozen). Yik Yak is location centric, so if you leave your college’s town you’re effectively out of what the service calls the “herd.” But the app will let you “set your herd” so you can have a peek into the hive mind of your alma mater’s student body after you graduate. Yik Yak, a social network that’s mainly used by college students, is what you get when you combine the community-driven aspect of Reddit with complete anonymity. And for Germans, it was really good to understand the problems the refugees have been facing.” No one was cutting it, no one was putting a two- or three-minute piece together after we filmed it. But on Periscope, everybody could see it was live,” he told The Guardian. “In Germany we have been having a big discussion about the intensity of media coverage of this story. Reporter Paul Ronzheimer recently used Periscope to document his journey with a group of Syrian refugees from Greece to Germany. Periscope was born out of its CEO’s frustration with the media’s coverage of the Gezi protests in Turkey, and as it grows in popularity, people around the world are discovering how powerful it can be for sharing a unique perspective of what’s happening. You can choose to save your broadcast for people to view on Periscope later, but every video shared on the service expires after 24 hours.

Your friends on Periscope and Twitter will be notified to tune in, and viewers can interact with broadcasts by commenting and leaving virtual hearts. If you’ve never used Periscope before, here’s how it works: download the app to your phone, log in, and start a live video stream with your phone’s camera.

That may explain why Twitter bought the app and its small team in February before it even launched. What Twitter did for making micro-status updates, Periscope could do for live video broadcasts.

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