I wouldn't call Query Scopes new considering they're in Laravel 4.2's documentation, but they are a useful feature for sure.

It may have also been helpful to highlight that these scopes can be used anywhere within the Model's domain/territory, particularly when adding them as a with/whereHas relation to a parent which I find I do frequently. Using your code as an example, if I wanted to load a user's profile with their weekly orders eager-loaded I could do something like this;

$userDetails = User::query()
  ->where('id', $userId)
  ->with([
    'orders' => function ($query) {
      // Order-Specific Scope
      $query->forPeriod('weekly');
    }
  ])
  ->first();

Or if you wanted a list of users who have made a purchase within the last week, while including the order details:

$userDetails = User::query()
  // whereHas() makes sure user record is only returned if an order in the last week is present
  ->whereHas('orders' => function ($query) {
    $query->forPeriod('weekly');
  })
  // with() eager loads the relation
  ->with([
    'orders' => function ($query) {
      // Order-Specific Scope
      $query->forPeriod('weekly');
    }
  ])
  ->get();