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Twitter is finally putting Periscope content — and thus, more video content — inside the main Twitter app.
Beginning Tuesday, Periscope livestreams shared on Twitter will appear in your Timeline the same way other videos do (only if you use iOS, though). That means they’ll autoplay, and you can click on the video to expand it fullscreen to see things like hearts and user comments the same way you’d watch a livestream on the Periscope app.
What you won’t be able to do: Broadcast directly from the Twitter app, or engage with any of the videos with “Likes” or comments. The new integration is “view only,” which means that a lot more people can now watch Periscope content, but you’ll still need the Periscope app to get the full Periscope experience.
The move represents Periscope’s first major collaboration with Twitter since its acquisition last January. It does two things: For starters, adding livestreams inside Twitter should generate more views for Periscope broadcasters. Before the update, Periscope streams appeared as links inside Twitter, requiring a user to actually click in order to watch the stream.
“From a broadcaster perspective … they now have access to viewers they wouldn’t have had access to,” Periscope engineer Sara Haider told Re/code. “People who don’t even have to know what Periscope is can now watch.”
The move also brings more video content to Twitter, a push the company has talked about before and something that other social apps like Facebook and Snapchat are also building toward. (Facebook is adding more livestreaming content, too.) That’s important for Twitter, because more videos means more video ads, which are usually more lucrative than static ads.
Advertisers can promote a tweet that includes an embedded Periscope the same way they promote any other tweet. They won’t be able to run a pre-roll video ad before a livestream, though, which Twitter’s Amplify ad offering allows for other videos. It may happen in the future, of course, but it’s not available now.
What’s still unknown is how far away a full Periscope integration may be. Or what the move means for Periscope’s long-term independence — it has its own office and its own CEO and, until now, it was a completely separate app. Early Periscope engineers Haider and Aaron Wasserman are confident that the new integration won’t impact Periscope’s independence moving forward.
“Us being able to keep this 10-minute distance that you can jog [between offices] is a really healthy setup, because it allows us to operate as a startup but not be totally engulfed by a company that’s at such a different stage,” said Wasserman. “But at the same time, we are so close we can work on really critical things like this.”
You can expect to see Periscope videos appear in your Timeline beginning on Tuesday. Unless you’re on Android, in which case the update is coming “soon.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
