Twitter bought Periscope for $120M — then let it die over 5 years

Periscope was founded in 2014 by Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein. The idea came to Beykpour during the 2013 Taksim Square protests in Istanbul — he could read about events on Twitter but could not see them. The company raised $1.5 million in seed funding before launching. In January 2015, before the product even publicly launched, Twitter acquired Periscope for approximately $120 million.

Periscope launched on March 26, 2015, and grew rapidly. By August 2015 — four months after launch — it had surpassed 10 million accounts, with viewers watching the equivalent of '40 years per day' of video. Apple named it iPhone App of the Year in 2015. But Periscope also faced challenges: it was used to pirate the Game of Thrones season 5 premiere and a Mayweather–Paquiao PPV fight, drawing 650+ takedown notices from the UFC.

By 2018, Periscope's usage was declining. Twitter had begun integrating Periscope's core features directly into its own app. On December 15, 2020, Twitter announced it would shut down Periscope, citing declining usage for 'approximately two years,' unsustainable maintenance costs, and a product realignment. The app was removed from app stores on March 31, 2021 — a $120 million acquisition that produced no direct revenue and was absorbed back into the platform that bought it.