Periscope users want to look in your fridge.
Yep, it’s true. Users of Twitter’s new live streaming social media app Periscope are obsessed with viewing fridge videos; the fetish has spawned hashtags like #fridgeview or #showusyourfridge, according to Mashable .
Periscope, Twitter’s new video app that hit the iTunes store Thursday, allows live streaming similar to the app Meerkat but has seemingly become more popular.
Periscope and other live streaming apps have the potential to increase citizen journalism and revolutionize the way traditional news outlets operate, but so far have been mainly used to showcase the contents of user’s refrigerators.
One Reddit user, called godmersham, claims to have started the trend by harassing a Periscope user into showing the inside of his fridge, he told Mashable .
“He said you could ask him anything and when we randomly asked to see his fridge he seemed oddly irritated by that. So we continued to ask him about it: the size, the brand, the color, how many cats he could fit in it, etc. Basically, as his irritation grew, so did the view count on the stream. This went on for about 10 minutes until he finally opened his damn fridge. And when he did… People. Went. Nuts. It was hilarious.”
Celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, who used Periscope to live stream his monologue rehearsal Thursday, have also endorsed the app, according to Digiday .
Meanwhile, fashion company DKNY took users on a Periscope walkthrough of the DKNY closet through their social media account.
Other high profile Periscope users include Marc Jacobs, both the brand and the man, H&M Canada, Puma, and Urban Outfitters.
Before you get too excited about the future of Periscope and run out to live stream your fridge, be warned. All that live streaming could cost serious bucks, as it drains users mobile data limits.
Although data limits vary from carrier to carrier, some obsessive Periscope users have already used up their month’s data supply, according to Venture Beat .
The cell phone companies aren’t the only ones who stand to make big bucks off all those fridge videos.
The live streaming market could potentially be worth billions to the company that captures it, and Twitter, which purchased Periscope for a reported $100 million, is aiming to do just that.
The Periscope app, which took a year to develop, has a number of added features that rival Meerkat doesn’t, including the option to record a live streamed video for viewing later, according to the Inquisitr .
Product founder Ryan Hoover told Tech Crunch that the products are still in their early days, and people haven’t figured out what the social norms should be yet.
“This whole fridge thing, it’s sort of this insider club that only certain people know about and it gives everyone a commonality.”