AUSTIN — Meerkat is either the most plaguy or groundbreaking app to strike it great at the South by Southwest Interactive festival . Live - streaming video , particularly on Twitter , has incredible potential : Meerkat has already been used to show the world a demonstration from Ferguson and a U.S. Secretary of Commerce swearing - in ceremony . But most of the 3 - week - oldiOS app ’s 100,000 - plus drug user are alive - stream complete garbage , like dateless shaky time of other the great unwashed using Meerkat .
Early adopter , journalist , and brands love Meerkat because it ’s a unexampled political platform to experiment with , but that does n’t mean much in term of longterm mainstream succeeder . There ’s a practical graveyard full of apps that caught on at SXSW and readily flamed out in the real world . But Meerkat has two advantage : More than two years of back - conclusion development work to secure high - quality live - cyclosis , and contention from Twitter .
Meerkat CEO Ben Rubin used South by Southwest Interactive to verbalise about his big plans for the app .
The great Twitter crackdown
Meerkat built its platform to overlap with Twitter to make the maximal amount of early user . You use your Twitter login to sign up for the app , then then Meerkat tweets for you when you start a bouncy - stream . All of your Twitter followers received push notification when you joined the app and depart streaming . Or at least that ’s how it used to work
Meerkat hype rocket at SXSW after Twitter cut off the app ’s access to its social graphical record — meaning your Twitter follower would no longer receive a apprisal when you started a Meerkat live - stream — because the axe fall the same sidereal day Twitter finalized its leverage of springy - streaming app Periscope . But Meerkat was bracing for Twitter ’s inevitable reaction and was already working to detangle itself from the web that helped launch it . Two of those features , in - app search for users and the ability to follow a substance abuser from Meerkat ’s website , were launch as SXSW Interactive was drawing to a close this week .
Meerkat has to beef up its avail because Twitter has its own live - streaming feature in the kit and boodle , thanks to the Periscope attainment , a deal that was in the works before Meerkat launch . Periscope reportedly work on similarly to Meerkat — though the app hasbeen in betasince before Twitter snagged it — but it ’s unclear if Periscope will be folded into Twitter in the form of in - tweet live video recording streams , like real - fourth dimension Vine , or if the platform is planning a loose integration . According toTechCrunch , there are two cardinal remainder between Periscope and Meerkat : Periscope lets you record broadcasts to atmosphere later and also let you place up private flow . Meerkat has no plan to permit video archiving in the near future tense .
“ We saw a community on Twitter , and we thought we need to unlock the habit for multitude who would be inclined more to know - flow content to their followers , ” Meerkat cofounder Ben Rubin said during a Yahoo technical school talk at SXSW . “ Twitter made sense . We cognize Twitter would be upset at some item . We did n’t know they would purchase a company in this same space . ”
Making Meerkat better—and fast
Meerkat is moving quickly to add new discovery tools .
Though Meerkat is moving quickly to improve its service forward of Periscope ’s launch — and recruiting high - visibility users likeJimmy Fallon , who Meerkats his dry run monologues — there is still hatful of work to be done to make the app a lasting success .
The app currently involve that you keep a nigh center on Twitter ( or have Meerkat open constantly ) so you do n’t overlook a live - stream . The end result : a constant feeling ofFOMO . At one point during SXSW , my whorl screen was overload with Meerkat notification about all the streams I had missed and could never watch because the app does n’t archive picture to watch out later . That could be why 20 pct of Meerkat users watch over more than two hours of videos a day — if you do n’t see them as they bechance , you miss out . ( The app does , however , lease you keep your own videos to your Camera Roll , without the Meerkat app ’s graphic sheathing , in case you capture something really classic and want to repost it somewhere later . )
There ’s also no way to find friends on other social mesh or consequence contacts to discover new streams to watch .
“ correctly now it ’s very circumscribed and we receipt that , because there ’s a lot of employment to do in find , ” Rubin said . ” The whole inquiry is about what is find on a real - sentence chopine — what does it signify ? I feel the squad has a very good answer for this and we ’re going to show that very presently . ”
The fact that Meerkat catch on first with journalists and Silicon Valley types also does n’t forecast well for the app . Everyone knows that college tike pick the breakout hits , like Snapchat andYik Yak . But Meerkat is distinctly serious about retell chop-chop , even invest a call on Wednesday for its users to link up the app ’s beta testing process .
We need the community to be part of MK ’s ware ontogenesis ð Email beta@meerkatapp.co to take part in our beta!pic.twitter.com/1oclMRmayu
The company also need to dissociate itself from Twitter altogether . Rubin allege there contrive for Meerkat to start its own connection , and potentially function with Facebook or another platform to circularize video .
“ Maybe the fact that [ Twitter ] escalated our determination - devising might do something very beautiful in the early stage of the political platform , ” Rubin said . “ I ’m very grateful for Twitter to allow us to jump - start our visual sense on the political platform . ”
We ’ll see if that early start can carry the app beyond South by Southwest and into the genuine universe .
