Periscope has been named the App store Best of 2015 by Apple. The Best of 2015 list created by Apple was split into two categories. One was “Apps” and the other was “Games”. Periscope is at the top of the “Apps” list.

There doesn’t seem to be much information about exactly how Apple determined what should be on the list. If you view the list on iTunes, it says: “We debated. We argued. Everyone had favorites, but to make this list of 2015’s finest, there could be no doubts. What you see here made the cut – they’re the most visionary, inventive, and irresistible apps and games of the year.”

Periscope is definitely an app that caught the attention of Podcasters in 2015. Re/Code reported in April that CEO of Periscope, Dick Costolo, said at an earnings call that Periscope had added a million new users in the app’s first ten days on the market.

Twitter acquired Periscope in 2015, and gave it plenty of support. At around the same time, Twitter pushed Meerkat away by refusing to allow it to continue to access Twitter’s social graph.

By doing so, it prevented the Meerkat app from having the ability to automatically notify users when their friends were streaming. That made it harder for Periscope’s competition to gain a foothold on Twitter.

To me (and probably many other podcasters) the greatest thing about Periscope was their responsiveness to users. When it started, the only available option was to broadcast in portrait. Shawn and I made a couple of attempts to use Periscope to live broadcast our podcast, and found it impossible to fit us both on the screen. Later, after many had requested a landscape mode, Periscope introduced landscape to the app.