According to a report on Buzzfeed, Twitter is testing a new button that would let people opt-in to receive alerts when someone they’re following starts live-streaming on Periscope and promotes the broadcast via Twitter. The idea is that these are the people whose broadcasts are really important to you and so you want to receive a separate notification when they’re live.

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That’s interesting and certainly continues to show how Twitter, like its competitors, is emphasizing live video. But notifications are already part of the native Periscope app. Breaking notifications out and making them part of the Twitter experience as opposed to the Periscope experience would seem to indicate that uptake of Periscope is lagging by all but professional or semi-professional video producers. So the app isn’t being used by casual viewers, just those who are *really* good at making video.

All that begs the question why Twitter keeps trying to make the separate Periscope experience happen. If there’s an acknowledgement that the Twitter app is preferred and provides the best user experience, then it would seem to be better to finally stop trying to keep the two apart and make live-streaming (including notifications) part of the native Twitter toolset.

(UPDATE: Well that was quick. Twitter has already killed the experiment as it reconsiders how to aid in live video discovery.)

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