
Meerkat is dying - nkurz
http://bgr.com/2015/03/30/meerkat-vs-periscope-analysis-journalism
======
minimaxir
I had a debate with one of TechCrunch's head editors about the journalistic
coverage of Meerkat:
[https://twitter.com/ryanlawler/status/582547758248136704](https://twitter.com/ryanlawler/status/582547758248136704)

Coincidentally TechCrunch published a more analytical approach a few hours
later: [http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/30/schrodingers-
meerkat/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/30/schrodingers-meerkat/)

What really annoys me is that no one took the devil's advocate approach to
analyzing Meerkat. "It's a new paradigm in live-streaming," perhaps, but no
one has considered that such a paradigm only fits in the narcissistic Silicon
Valley culture.

Periscope atleast managed to appeal to non-techies, but even then, it appears
to have peaked. In the first week of release.

There's a nonzero probability that everyone was wrong about personal
livestreaming in the first place.

~~~
johnrob
And, people forget that Justin.tv worked this space pretty hard before
transitioning to video game broadcasting.

~~~
bentcorner
As a non-iPhone user that has seen neither meerkat or periscope, what's the
new thing here? Justin.tv/twitch and ustream have been doing live streaming
for a long time now.

~~~
hodgesmr
I think there is an interesting conversation to be had about why, in a world
with LiveStream, UStream, & YouTube Live Events, people see Meerkat/Periscope
as revolutionary. Also apply that question to Spotify vs Rhapsody.

~~~
filmgirlcw
Timing. I was a Rhapsody user in 2003. I even had an AV receiver that
supported Rhapsody back in 2005 or so, assuming it was connected to my
computer (for stuff like track listing and whatnot on the device). But it
didn't take off because timing wasn't right. People were just at a place to
start buying digital tunes -- streaming music was awkward.

But beyond that, it took the iPhone (and devices like it -- but really, let's
admit it was the iPhone. I loved my Treo, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile
devices too, but it was the damn iPhone) to usher in a device where people
could stream on the go. Before that, using Rhapsody (or even Spotify, early
on) was kind of a PITA.

Spotify made it easier by letting you sync offline stuff with your iPod or
iPhone, but it took widespread 3G and beyond, good data plans and saturation
of smartphones for people to be like, "yeah, I can replace my iTunes with
streaming music."

The same is, to me, true of streaming video. You could do live streaming close
to a decade ago. On your cellphone. Shit, I remember envying people using Qik
on the Nokia phones in 2008. But it took a long time, there was massive
latency and the quality sucked.

Meerkat and Periscope are fast, easy to use, have restreaming features and are
easy to drop-in, drop-out of.

Whether they last or not, I don't know. But just as it took e-sports to make
the Justin.tv model work (and I remember when they launched Twitch. All of us,
myself included, thought it wouldn't work. But then the devices for
livestreaming game videos became so inexpensive and the experience so
compelling, Sony and Microsoft built it into consoles. It took the barrier
getting super easy and the content being compelling for the user case to be
seen).

So again, timing.

~~~
hkmurakami
Speaking of timing, we can even say the same thing about Twitch.

Video game live broadcasting existed as early as 2005 from Korea, where we
would get a 240p stream from OGN (a Korean cable channel), which would
sometimes get replicated over users' personal servers. Only the most hardcore
Starcraft Broodwar fans stayed up until 3am to watch these games live though.

------
bane
Something I wrote recently on this

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9207290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9207290)

"It used to be common to see "paid advertisement" inserts in major magazines.
Sometimes going on for a dozen pages. It was clear they were PR pieces:
typeset differently and with a different editorial style than the rest of the
magazine. Sometime in the mid-2000s they simply seemed to go away and now the
magazine just uses the PR pieces as content filler, completely
indistinguishable from the rest of the periodical."

~~~
swang
Yeah they call it "native advertising" now.

~~~
DrJosiah
Sort of. While it's not universal, many "native advertising" platforms that
integrate with content sites will specify that the content is promoted,
sponsored, or something similar. As an example, see nativo.net (disclaimer: I
worked there briefly in 2013, and all ads/content served had those
qualifiers).

------
joeblau
"STREAM OVER." That is all I've ever seen from Meerkat. I think they did a
great job in terms of getting the users behind their product, but the user
experience is terrible. I've tried to click on about 15 Meerkat streams in the
last 2 weeks and I haven't seen one. At least Periscope has a video archive
that lets you watch something even after it's over.

Being in SV and reading all the news, I will say that I thought it was bigger
than it actually was. On the other hand, I've seen Periscope videos from all
over the world. Twitter seems to have created something great, solving the
usability issues which were in Meerkat's product.

~~~
nnain
haha... indeed. "STREAM OVER" is what I see from this app 9/10 times in
Meerkat. I got so bugged of the notifications that I logged off from the app 2
days back; before reading this article.

------
mxfh
1:n mobile live video is probably simply not a mass market thing. Around 2008
there was whole set of those mobile broadcasting services already:
_flixwagon[1], qik[2], kyte[3], ustream[4], bambuser_ just to name some. Also
a shout out to the original _vine_ which was 2 times as long _12seconds.tv_.

Those headlines linking to mostly dead sites and blogs sound quite familiar:

[1]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=flixwagon&dateRange=all](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=flixwagon&dateRange=all)

[2]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=qik&dateRange=custom&sort=byPo...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=qik&dateRange=custom&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&type=story&dateStart=1167609600&dateEnd=1262390400)

[3]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=kyte&dateRange=custom&sort=byP...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=kyte&dateRange=custom&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&type=story&dateStart=1167609600&dateEnd=1262390400)

[4] [http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/05/ustream-launches-mobile-
vid...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/05/ustream-launches-mobile-video-
broadcasting-apps/)

------
encoderer
I think accounts of Meerkat's life and death are both being greatly
exaggerated here. It's a contender, it now has a war chest, lets see what the
guys can do with it.

And I think it's unfair to suggest they just "cashed in" for the quick buck.

~~~
malloreon
I'm gonna go ahead and guess twitter's "war chest" is a little bigger than
Meerkat's.

~~~
bigdubs
I'm gonna go ahead and guess that those things aren't really comparable.

~~~
clay_to_n
Aren't they, when Twitter now owns Meerkat's competitor Periscope?

~~~
bigdubs
How different teams use money is not comparable. Meerkat is a small team, 14mm
is a huge amount for them. Twitter is a huge company. It is unclear how these
things would be used to benchmark one or the other.

------
downandout
I still don't understand how you can raise $14M for a social media app and not
have an Android version. "Yes, Mr. VC, it's true that we aren't doing well on
the iOS charts, and we purposely excluded 85% of the market from using it
despite the proliferation of easy-to-use cross-platform dev tools. But we do
have a lot of press and a cool logo....it's a Meerkat! Did Tom give you our
wire instructions?".

~~~
treelovinhippie
Yeah Android user here. Always frustrating when it's iOS only when as you
said, Android has 85% global market share. The usual rebuttal seems to be "iOS
users are more sophisticated or wealthy, we'll release Android later".

~~~
downandout
_> The usual rebuttal seems to be "iOS users are more sophisticated or
wealthy_

That actually can be a valid argument IF your revenue model is heavily skewed
toward IAP or you are charging up front for the app. But for a free social
media app whose sole purpose in life is to get as many active users as humanly
possible, it's absurd not to have an Android version when it represents most
of the market.

~~~
calbear81
Social apps inherently need to be trendy and seem "hip" to catch on with the
right crowd. Having limited resources, they chose to go with one platform at
launch. I would bet that amongst their target taste-maker crowd (celebrities,
YouTube personalities, etc.), iOS has higher market share when compared to the
larger general smartphone market.

------
mlmonkey
FTA: "Almost precisely one year later, the same crew of tech “journalists” who
proclaimed Secret would be massively influential, declared Meerkat the next
huge social media app."

Can these "journalists" be identified? I didn't follow the Meerkat craze when
it happened, but if it's the same crew of people, that's pretty damning.

------
dacort
Interesting seeing the activity on Twitter and how quickly Periscope caught up
once it was released:
[https://twitter.com/dacort/status/582570506043310080](https://twitter.com/dacort/status/582570506043310080)

~~~
Someone
Extrapolating by eye, with a biased look, one could describe that as "Total
market is growing, Periscope briefly grabbed it, but will be gone within a
week"

An eye biased the other way could say that Periscope managed to reach
everybody interested in this kind of product, and made them all realize that
they aren't really interested at the same time, whereas Meerkat was
discovering that at a slower pace, concluding that both products are doomed.

Retention numbers might be able to prove either of these explanations wrong.

Either way, venture capital is aiming for greater gains by taking larger
risks. Because of that, even if Meerkat fails, the decision to invest in it
still might have been the right one.

------
makeshifthoop
Meerkat's Hourly Rankings in the last two weeks

[https://sensortower.com/ios/us/life-on-air-
inc/app/meerkat-t...](https://sensortower.com/ios/us/life-on-air-
inc/app/meerkat-tweet-live-video/954105918#category-
rankings?category=0&chart_type=topfreeapplications&hourly=true&start_date=2015-03-01&end_date=2015-03-30)

Versus Periscope's

[https://sensortower.com/ios/us/twitter-
inc/app/periscope/972...](https://sensortower.com/ios/us/twitter-
inc/app/periscope/972909677#category-
rankings?category=0&chart_type=topfreeapplications&hourly=true&start_date=2015-03-24&end_date=2015-03-30)

------
siculars
Doesn't the relative flipflop between Meerkat and Periscope have more to do
with Twitter cutting Meerkat out of the social graph and Periscope having
insider trading knowledge of the Twitter platform? How is this not like
Microsoft pushing Internet Explorer?

------
solve
> The ugly truth that U.S. tech media

The ugly truth that U.S. tech media doesn't make any effort to investigate
startup launches, they copy and paste articles that are handed to them :)

~~~
smacktoward
If readers were willing to pay for good journalism, they would receive some.

~~~
borgia
>If readers were willing to pay for good journalism, they would receive some.

This is it. Tech journalism is a cesspit of clickbait, hysteria and social
justice nonsense because nobody is paying for it and this appeal to the
lowest-common-denominator of clicks brings in money.

But then nobody is going to be willing to pay these entities for the content
they're using to current bring in revenue.

------
gdilla
What we don't know from the article is Meerkat's engagement stats. If reuse
and retention is high, investors may feel they just need to work on an
efficient new user funnel to create a healthy growth trajectory. Maybe meerkat
was featured by apple and then inevitably lost downloads post-feature. The
same thing will happen to periscope which is being featured now. I suspect the
platform with the best network effects will reach success faster, and I'd put
by money on periscope there because Twitter. But it's premature to say meerkat
is dying at this point in time.

------
AndrewKemendo
Interesting because I only heard of meerkat starting about two weeks ago
during SXSW. It seemed like it was everywhere, but not because of headlines,
because I kept seeing [LIVE NOW] on all these tweets. Too bad all those links
just went nowhere because I was too late.

Funny cause this week I saw Jim Gaffigan post a sernies of meerkat videos onto
youtube. I thought, well doesn't that defeat the purpose of a snapchat style
broadcast - if someone wants to save it? Clearly I wasn't the only one.

------
rargulati
The key differentiator is the subtle switch to 1-with-many (along with
advancements in and proliferation of mobile technology + bandwidth). This
leads to shared experiences, which are quite different from the 1:n (1-to-n)
model.

The eye opening moment for me was jumping into a periscope stream, commenting
on various things relating to the stream, and having the presenter comment and
take action based on what I'd said ("high-five the Philz barista for an
amazing coffee"). Really more of a conversation.

The feeling of controlling the experience partially, in my opinion, completely
changes the dynamic. Also - I can enter streams of places I've never been to
and join someone on their adventure. With enough syndication, eventually we
can all join in on these adventures with people that have similar interests
(subreddit style).

Meerkat opened the floodgates. Periscope is the better execution of the idea.

------
tootie
First time I heard of meerkat is when I heard that it was getting beaten by
periscope.

------
austenallred
Holy hell, the app is two weeks old, there are tens of thousands of tweets
about it every day, and it has $20 million dollars in the bank. Is this really
what we're calling "dying" now? Because if so, pretty much every other
consumer product since the beginning of time is fucked.

I haven't turned off Meerkap notifications on my phone, mostly out of sheer
curiosity, and I am seeing literally hundreds of meerkat streams _per day_ of
my followers. Apparently you don't have to be at the top of the chart to get
hundreds of thousands of downloads (not to mention the app being featured by
the app store).

This is such shitty journalism I can't even stand it. Let's have a substantive
discussion about a product, but calling it "dead" is bullshit clickbait and
even the author must know it.

~~~
minimaxir
You're not exactly impartial when it comes to Meerkat:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9269693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9269693)

The reason companies take venture capital is to facilitate growth. If the
company is trending downward _three days after funding_ , especially in the
immediate response to a direct competitor, that's a very bad sign, both for
the company, and the venture capital firm.

~~~
austenallred
I never claimed to be impartial. I use both apps and have been following them
closely. I think Periscope will win some portion of the market, and Meerkat
another. Saying that it's screwed right now, while there's still so much
excited activity, is still bunk.

Almost every app's growth slows after a viral launch. In a few days we'll see
Periscope's growth slowing as well. That doesn't mean they all die.

~~~
minimaxir
"Slow growth" is not the same as _negative growth._

~~~
austenallred
There are more people downloading the app than deleting it. That is still
positive growth.

Falling down in the app-store rankings two days after launch is a poor metric
to use to determine the future of a company with years of burn still in the
bank.

------
feverishaaron
I suspect Periscope's meteoric rise has to do more with being prominently
featured in the "Best New Apps" section since day one. It was well after
Meerkat reached peak-blogger that it appeared in that section, and even so, I
don't believe it was in the #1 slot.

------
jarjoura
Both Meerkat and Periscope were hyped at launch. People jumped on the hype and
both apps were then left to themselves to prove they can sustain the hype.

Periscope might actually make it because it does a lot of little things right
to attract non-techies. I've shared vodka with a bunch of Russians and just
this morning laughed with people in France.

Periscope is not without issues though, and it's hard to use when it takes
forever to start a stream and constantly buffers in the middle.

It might be too early to call Meerkat dead, but I do think it lacks enough to
carry it past the hype. Only time will tell though :)

------
atmosx
Periscope is good but there are too many features lacking at this point. To
mention a few:

1) Privacy: What if I wanna share a stream with just my family?

2) Search: I can't search e.g. for 'racing'

3) Management/rules: Was watching a female from Dubai answering questions
about life in Dubai. After about 45 seconds, an idiot came in acting as sex
offender more than anything else, driving the level of the conversation down
in no time. The 'author' should be able to ban accounts.

Other than that periscope is good and works fine.

~~~
tehwebguy
Re: 1) I believe the lock button allows you to stream to only specified users

~~~
atmosx
Hm, might be. Truth to be told, I tried streaming for a very brief period and
didn't notice any lock buttons.

------
ArekDymalski
>There is also no doubt that if Jared Leto and his merry band had realized a
week ago that Meerkat would drop out of the top 500 iPhone app chart by Sunday
night, they would have slammed their check books shut in a hurry. They were
obviously blinded by the tech journalism flimflammery

If the above statement was true, that would mean that this ecosystem doesn't
make much sense. Am I naive thinking that founding decisions aren't so
emotional, "impulse purchases"?

~~~
hodgesmr
That depends. Do you believe what is shown on Shark Tank?

------
legohead
I wonder if Meerkat could have held onto its market share better if it had an
Android version also?

~~~
Andrex
Periscope doesn't have an Android app, so I doubt it.

~~~
disbelief
That actually makes the argument stronger imo.

------
hobarrera
I've seen a couple of posts regarding this, but none even remotely explain:

WTF is Meerkat (aside from an Ubuntu release, and an animal)?

------
nazgul
I never heard of Meerkat before this article. So the press blitz wasn't that
great.

------
tempodox
The article title probably promised too much but if Meerkat's downfall did
take any “tech journalism” with it, it would be good riddance. I wonder what
the consequences of investors not doing their due diligence will be...

------
minzinger
Thought of this. ([http://tapastic.com/series/101-uses-for-a-dead-
meerkat](http://tapastic.com/series/101-uses-for-a-dead-meerkat))

------
protomyth
Every time I followed a link on twitter to Meerkat, I got the stream is over
message. I would be that I'm not the only one and wonder if this might be the
difference in the end.

------
kapsteur
Bigger and faster is the buzz, quicker is the fall.

Meerkat has only one month of service on the store, and already 14M$ in
pocket.

------
rebelidealist
Not all is lost for Meerkat if they do FB connect. The Twitter first strategy
only works for SV.

As a caveat, Meerkat did make a bone headed move by abusing the twitter api
with auto follows. Twitter probably stepped in to far also by cutting their
social graph.

~~~
minimaxir
Does a FB Connect strategy actually work nowadays? Most startups I've seen try
it get complaints like "do I HAVE to use Facebook?"

~~~
untog
_Most startups I 've seen try it get complaints like "do I HAVE to use
Facebook?"_

On Hacker News, yes. Amongst normal users it's absolutely fine, particularly
if you're delivering some kind of social benefit (i.e. actually using the
social graph you are given access to)

------
acomjean
Meerkat (the Oreilly news reader) died 9 years ago.

I used to use that site... Something about the name Meerkat.

[http://archive.oreilly.com/meerkat.csp?&p=1](http://archive.oreilly.com/meerkat.csp?&p=1)

------
coldcode
15 minutes of fame isn't just for people.

