If you use your iPhone to stream live videos to Twitter and other social media platforms, you’ve probably heard of Meerkat by now. It’s a new app designed for the iPhone and iPad IOS operating systems. With Meerkat, you can instantly stream live videos and conversations directly to your Twitter followers in real time. Followers you send your videos to are notified through the use of push notifications. They can then view your videos and stream them to their followers in real time as well.
Pros & Cons
Although Meerkat gives you the ability to instantly stream videos to Twitter, they can only view them live; there are no reruns. Streams can be kept locally on your iPhone, never in the “cloud”, but everyone on the web can view your videos as they are streamed. What happens on Meerkat is automatically sent to Twitter without further permission or exception.
Marketing
Although applications like TwitCasting have applied this same technology, it didn’t catch on as quickly and as strongly as Meerkat has. It was launched on February 27, 2015 for downloading at the App Store.
Since everything that happens on Meerket is synced directly with Twitter, word got around very fast. Produced by Life On Air, Inc., it was featured on a post on Product Hunt by the co founder of the company, Ben Rubin. He discussed the benefits of downloading the app and asked for feedback from his followers. There is also a t-shirt available for sale on the Meerkat website that should spread the word as well. Other than that, there has not been any formal advertising for the new app.
Implications of Meerkat’s Success
Meerkat’s popularity has been skyrocketing so fast it actually might change the way live televised events are handled. It’s already began a battle for the dominance of the live streaming application market. Periscope is another live streaming application that does a little more than Meerkat. With Periscope, both live and previously broadcast videos can be watched and broadcasting can be set on private or public. On March 13, Twitter announced that it had acquired Periscope for what has been reported to be $100 million.
Meerkat has already been used by celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Jared Leto to connect with audiences on a grand scale. Kevin Jonas even Tweeted a live video of himself making an omelet. It will be interesting to watch the growth rate of Meerkat in the coming weeks. It really has the potential to kick off an era of video streaming that has yet to be seen.