Periscope launched in March 2015 and was bought by Twitter before it had even shipped, for a reported hundred million dollars. The pitch was simple and, at the time, genuinely novel: open the app, press a button, and you are broadcasting live to anyone who wants to watch, from a phone, anywhere.
It arrived at the right moment and was used for things nobody had planned. Protests were broadcast live by participants, breaking news came from bystanders rather than crews, and for a period it changed what live video on the internet meant. Twitter eventually folded its best features directly into the main app.
That absorption was also its end. Periscope was shut down on 31 March 2021, with Twitter citing declining usage and rising maintenance costs against a product whose functions it had already duplicated. The apps stopped working and the service went offline.
What happened to the broadcasts
Before the shutdown, Twitter made broadcast archives available for download to the people who created them, and published a public archive of replays as a static site. Broadcasters who acted at the time were able to retrieve their own recordings.
Anybody who did not is in a much weaker position now. Periscope links no longer resolve to a working player, and the material that was not deliberately preserved by its creator or captured by a web archive is effectively gone.
The Internet Archive holds some Periscope material, and broadcasts shared into Twitter timelines sometimes survive there. Neither is comprehensive, and both are worth checking if you are looking for something specific.
What to do with a Periscope link now
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1
Check what kind of link you have
A pscp.tv or periscope.tv address points at a service that no longer runs. A twitter.com or x.com address for live video is a different matter and may still work.
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2
Try the X address if there is one
Live video now happens inside X itself. If the broadcast was shared to a timeline, that post may still exist, and the Twitter page here handles those addresses.
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3
Look in the web archives
The Internet Archive captured a portion of Periscope, and the Archive.org page on this site handles those addresses if you find what you are after.
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4
Accept that some of it has gone
A great deal of Periscope was never archived by anyone. That is an unfortunate answer, but it is the honest one.
Where live video from Twitter lives now
The functions Periscope pioneered did not disappear with it — they moved into the main application, where they still are.
Live broadcasting after the shutdown
Going live from the main X app does what Periscope did, and those broadcasts appear in the timeline as ordinary posts. A recording that remains up can be handled through the Twitter page on this site using its x.com or twitter.com address.
Spaces, the live audio feature, is the other descendant of that work. It is audio rather than video and is handled separately by the platform, with its own rules about whether a recording is kept.
So if you arrived looking for a way to save a live broadcast from Twitter, the answer is that the Twitter page here is the one you want, provided the recording is still on the timeline.
Periscope shutdown questions
Is Periscope still running?
No. It was shut down on 31 March 2021. The apps stopped working and the service went offline.
Why was it closed?
Twitter cited falling usage and the cost of maintaining a separate product whose main features had already been built into the main app.
Can I still download my old broadcasts?
Only if you retrieved them before the shutdown, when Twitter offered creators a download of their archive. There is no route to them now.
Do pscp.tv links still work?
No. Those addresses point at a service that no longer exists.
Is there any archive at all?
Twitter published a static archive of replays around the shutdown, and the Internet Archive captured a portion. Neither is complete.
Where did live video on Twitter go?
Into the main app. Broadcasts made there appear as ordinary posts, and the Twitter page on this site handles those addresses.
What about Twitter Spaces?
That is live audio rather than video, introduced around the same period, and handled separately by the platform.
Can this page recover a specific broadcast?
No, and no tool can. If it was not archived by its creator or by a web archive, it is gone.
Why keep a page about a dead service?
Because people still search for it, and a straight answer is more use than a page that pretends to work and fails.
What is the lesson here?
That a platform closing takes everything on it. Periscope gave a month's notice and most people did not act. Anything you would mind losing is worth downloading while the service still exists.