Here's the first Periscope live 360 video taken underwater
If you wanted to immerse yourself underwater, look no further than Twitter.
Mitch Oates, a digital creator, photographer and surfer from Sydney, Australia, completed the first-ever 360-degree live video underwater on Twitter's Periscope app Tuesday.
Twitter confirmed the achievement to Mashable. The timing shouldn't be that surprising since the company released live 360 video on Periscope only last week. But the broadcast showcases another immersive content win for Twitter as it competes with YouTube and Facebook.
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Facebook has yet to host a live 360 video underwater, according to a Facebook spokesperson. That absence comes despite the feature being released in December, nearly three weeks before Periscope. Facebook, however, has featured other 360 videos underwater from outlets such as the New York Times, The LAD Bible and See Australia.
Live 360 on Periscope and Facebook has only been rolled out to a select number of accounts. Oates does not have access to Facebook Live 360 but does have access to Periscope's, where he has more than 37,000 followers.
Oates quickly decided to take the experience underwater. He has frequently livestreamed on Periscope underwater and his bio on Twitter reads "world's first surf scoper."
The underwater stream worked, but didn't go as perfectly as he had hoped. Oates took his viewers underwater about 5 to 10 meters (about 16 to 33 feet) using an iPhone 6 and the Insta360 camera. On Twitter and on Periscope, people could move around the scene with a cursor on a desktop screen or a finger on a smartphone.
Unfortunately, the stream lasted for under three minutes.
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Oates' phone survived, but the battery for the 360 camera died. Oates told Mashable that he had "fully charged it and it just dropped all of the sudden ... really strange."
You can bet Oates will be back.
Topics Social Media X/Twitter
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
