Another important update to Periscope has been released by Twitter; this has been done a month and a half after the launch of the live streaming app. Ability to sign up for Periscope by using a phone number in place of a Twitter account is considered to be one of the most important updates.

Periscope is still suggesting that users should sign up via Twitter. But if you don't connect to Twitter account or don't have one like some other people, you can sign up for Periscope by just entering your phone number and the verification code.

With this latest update, you can change your profile picture. By tapping avatar in profile, you can take a new profile picture or select a photo from your camera. It is now possible to tap on a comment and reply to a user with a message that automatically contains his or her @username. It will also be possible to find that if a broadcaster has blocked a user in the comments.

There are number of changes introduced in the new version of Periscope. Now Twitter verified badges appear in the users section, and in search. The 'Broadcasts' section of one's profile now shows his full broadcast history and Your list of following/followers is now sorted by recency in place of alphabetically.

The app is optimized for iPhone and iPod touch running iOS 7.1 or later and could be downloaded from the App Store for free.

The app was released in late March; its main rival Meerkat was launched just a month earlier. Meerkat itself was recently updated with phone number verification and address book integration and some other improvements were also made.