Periscope CEO: "Piracy is not something that excites us"
Periscope CEO Kayvon Beykpour has been on the defensive following the Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao fight where thousands viewed copyright-infringing broadcasts on the live-streaming app.
Beykpour said "piracy is not something that excites us" and they are "genuinely excited" to work with their partners to develop tools to combat such activity.
"Companies like YouTube and Ustream developed those tools over years. We've been live for a month. And we're really excited to work with whoever we need to to figure out what those tools are," he said Wednesday on "CBS This Morning."
During the fight, executives at Showtime and HBO reportedly contacted the Twitter-owned app, requesting that the company take down those illegal streams. While he said it is difficult to quantify exactly how many users engaged with that content, Beykpour said they received 66 requests to take down broadcasts and responded to 30 of those within minutes and took down the streams.
"I think we built a tool that allows people to share what they're seeing with the world, and sometimes people will use that for things that we have no intention of supporting," he said
Adding fuel to the fire, Twitter co-founder Dick Costolo claimed victory for Periscope.
"What that tweet was in reference to was all the amazing content leading up to the fight. Watching Manny Pacquiao in his locker room, that's not something you could see on television, and we saw it through, of all people, HBO's eyes," Beykpour said.
While the live-stream app has sparked piracy concerns, Beykpour said "there's a huge potential for it to change journalism."
"We were watching Paul Lewis on the ground in Baltimore sharing the important things that were happening there in the most raw and unfettered way that I've experienced from a journalism standpoint. That's the sort of thing that's exciting to me," he said.
Before Periscope, Beykpour worked for education technology company Blackboard, where he led the mobile division. He left the company in 2013 and began planning a trip to Istanbul. Just before he was ready to leave, protests broke out in Taksim Square.
"I remember thinking to myself, 'Is it safe for me to go? I want to see what's happening on the ground.' And you watch the news or you even look at Twitter and you get a very sensationalized account of what's happening, and I wanted to see a live feed of the street that my hotel was on -- that would be the perfect articulation to me of whether it was safe or not," Beykpour said. "'There are thousands of people who walk around every day with smartphones and high-speed network connections. Why can't I see through their eyes?'"
Twitter reportedly bought the app for around $100 million before its launch on March 26. Within 10 days following the launch, it acquired 1 million users.
It's still in its infancy, but Beykpour believes Periscope has the potential to be a "teleportation device."
"It'll allow you to explore the world in real time through other's eyes. You want to be on a beach in Thailand right now? You want to see what's happening on the streets in Istanbul? You can do that."