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Periscope's stream tipping is available outside the US
Periscope's livestream tipping system is no longer a US-only affair -- the Twitter-owned service has expanded its Super Broadcaster program to Canada, Ireland and the UK. As before, livestreamers who've received enough Super Hearts (which viewers pay for with in-app purchases) can apply to become Super Broadcasters and trade those Hearts in for real money. Periscope will only take a $1 cut. Effectively, it's a spin on Twitch's cheers or YouTube's Super Chat. You're rewarding streamers you like and encouraging them to treat it as more of a business than a hobby.
Periscope adds a confusing way to support your favorite streamers
While Facebook is currently winning the livestreaming wars, rival Periscope has its fair share of devotees. The Twitter-owned service hosted 200 million broadcasts in 2016 and close to 77 million hours of live video in the first quarter of this year. Some Periscope broadcasters even draw huge crowds (Amanda Oleander, for example, is an LA artist with over 600,000 followers) with hundreds of hearts flooding the screen. Today, Periscope is announcing a new feature that rewards those broadcasters with more than mere likes. It's called Super Hearts, which are essentially fancy hearts that viewers pay for with real money in exchange for attention. But the real benefit is for broadcasters: Those Super Hearts could potentially turn into cold hard cash.
