Event Livestreaming

We became fascinated with mobile livestreaming when Meerkat and Periscope were released in early 2015.  We wanted to understand how people used these services to engage with real world events.  We found that independent broadcasters would cover an event with overlapping streams.  Having multiple perspectives gives a unique, authentic view of an event.  The real-time backchannels allow the viewers to communicate with one another and with the broadcaster, giving them the ability to engage and influence the broadcaster and so the event itself.

Our investigations raised several questions:

1. Could we create a user experience centered on the event, rather than the individual livestream? What new behavior would that enable?
2. Could we create a backchannel that scaled beyond hundreds of participants?