Twitter today announced that the iOS version of its Periscope live video streaming app now gives you a way to record streams with the front-facing selfie camera on iOS devices with an artificial “mask” of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. This comes just five days before the U.S. presidential election.
You can activate the feature by starting a broadcast, flipping the camera over to selfie mode, and then swiping up from the two little heads on the bottom of the display. The feature is iOS only, the Periscope team said in a Medium post, meaning that it won’t be coming to Android.
The talking head effect of the moving mouth on each presidential candidate is goofy, and a little reminiscent of the JibJab cartoons of George W. Bush and John Kerry in the run-up to the 2004 election. But you could interpret it as just another way for Twitter to try to get out the vote.
This comes after Twitter made it possible for users to get a personalized link to register to vote by sending a direct message to its @gov account. And earlier this week Twitter enhanced the experience by letting users get information about polling places, candidates, and propositions by DMing @gov.
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Facebook and Google have also taken steps to help people vote in recent months.
In March Twitter said Periscope had racked up 200 million streams.
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