
Meerkat built a new app under a pseudonym, and almost 1M people are using it - riqbal
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/28/13081014/meerkat-houseparty-video-app
======
munificent
> "Everything in this new generation is trying to come back to what feels
> real," she says. "So we’re making a bet that live video is as real as it
> gets."

Oh God, I weep for the world we're making for ourselves.

Last I checked, _putting down your phone and actually being present with
someone_ is as real as it gets. But I guess it's hard to monetize, gamify, and
micro-transact that.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _But I guess it 's hard to monetize, gamify, and micro-transact that._

It's easy. It's been the job of pubs, bars, restaurants, theme parks, sports
events, etc. since time immemorial.

What is hard to do is to make it a high-growth business that would attract VC
money. That's the source of this bullshit.

------
coldtea
> _Can private broadcasting succeed where public live-streaming failed?_

No. Nobody cares that much for their friends (especially their hundreds of
"friends" on social media), or has that time to spare on real-time streaming.
For the times when this is actually needed, there are tons of videoconference
apps.

Next question?

~~~
rescripting
What seems powerful about this idea is its more like a common physical space
you gather in with your friends than a phone or video conference. You show up
"in the house" (treehouse, cafeteria, club, call it whatever) and some of your
friends are there, some aren't. You don't have to call people up and
interaction just happens naturally more like it would if you walked into a
room of your friends.

I wrote off Snapchat with many of the same kind of flip dismissals and I was
pretty wrong about how popular it would eventually be. I'm too old for this
app, or even snapchat, but think back to when you were a teen and remember
what it was like to just shoot the shit with friends after class. Thats the
kind of interaction they seem to be trying to facilitate.

~~~
personjerry
But why wouldn't they just... go there?

~~~
IanCal
Meeting up for half an hour takes weeks of planning for my group of old school
friends.

~~~
personjerry
But wouldn't it take a bunch of planning for everyone to "arrive" at a
particular persons video?

~~~
IanCal
Finding half an hour isn't the problem, it's the two hours of travelling it
takes me to get to one of theirs (and another two to get back) or what they do
with their dogs, or what they do with their newborn. It requires lining up an
entire day or weekend we're all free, rather than just a half hour.

------
userbinator
My first thought about this is "yet another proprietary telepresence app"?
It's a bit sad that although the IETF and ITU have developed plenty of
standard protocols for things like this (SIP, RTP, H.323, etc.), which
would've allowed for great interoperability in the same way that the Internet
standardised on IP/TCP/TLS/HTTP(S), others have chosen to create their own
closed protocols and their own isolated userbases. IM is the other related
service that would've been well-served by standard protocols, but instead
turns out to be scattered among different providers all with userbases that
don't completely overlap. One of the comments at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12620468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12620468)
about having half a dozen IM clients is very relevant here.

At least email is still pretty standardised, but in some ways it feels like
the Internet is breaking apart. :-/

------
vit05
They have come to the same conclusion as Blab Ceo.

"Because most live streams aren’t interesting enough to justify stopping what
they are doing to watch your broadcast." [https://medium.com/@shaanvp/blab-is-
dead-long-live-blab-d2f7...](https://medium.com/@shaanvp/blab-is-dead-long-
live-blab-d2f72449ddb8#.ucxmbwloq)

------
HillaryBriss
Six or eight faces (video feed rectangles) on the mobile device
simultaneously. Each rectangle needs to be information rich. People will need
to stare at the camera and get into just the right position to give that video
feed rectangle a high signal to noise ratio.

You have to pay careful attention while you're using it. It's like attending a
video conference. How often and for how long do you want to do that?

~~~
nitely
Uhm, the important bit is the audio. The vídeo is helpful to know people is
still there...

------
mrlatinos
The sad part is that it's just another idea for Facebook and Twitter to steal
again.

~~~
rhizome
I'll be shocked if either of them are able to implement video multichat before
I retire.

~~~
throwaway2016a
Can you clarify why? I'm curious.

~~~
Smoofer
He's retiring very soon.

------
frik
Why do I read about HouseParty app on HN only in Oct 2016? Recode featured it
in June 2016, other websites in Sept - as I found out today. :(

I am little interested about yesterday's news or last months news.

What other websites would you suggest beside HN to read about latest startup
trends?

~~~
akhatri_aus
HN isn't about the latest news, because the comments are always about how the
idea is terrible or useless and technically inept.

Even when there's a million users, or crazy growth that doesn't change
apparently. There's a saying somewhere now that if HN hates it its a good
sign. This is probably a test of it. Snapchat & Twitter in the hall of fame.

~~~
ChoHag
Getting a million users isn't all that hard. The test is whether you keep
them.

------
cocktailpeanuts
How is this technically different from TinyChat?

Is it the social graph? (Friends or friends of friends)

In that case, how does this have advantage over Facebook if Facebook ever
decides to build one like this?

I hope they have some other advantage that can't be easily replicated.

~~~
dannyr
You know that Facebook tried to copy Snapchat right?

We all know how that turned out.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
Yeah I think they're doing a hell of a job with their Instagram stories. I've
been observing how people are sharing less content on Snapchat stories
nowadays

------
lightedman
This is just a lame version of Camfrog, almost 15 years after Camfrog was
made.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Which products do you use today that were the first/original in their
categories?

~~~
lightedman
Newsgroups. IRC. University E-mail (though it's no longer done on a shared
system like it was in the 60s and 70s.) Probably more if I sat down and
actually tried remembering.

------
na85
The important question is "How are they going to monetize?"

All the talk of "candid conversations" sure doesn't give me the warm-and-
fuzzies when I consider that the only way to monetize this is abusing user
metadata or scraping the video feeds for trending topics.

~~~
weixiyen
Hmm, I think that's probably the least important question right now. I want to
know:

\- is it 1 million returning daily users, or 1 million registered users?

\- percentage of their registered users in the past month that come back every
day (basically, are users addicted, or not really?).

\- How many times users open the app every day and average length of each
video session?

I've seen the app there before and tried it out, very nice onboarding flow
that seemed like it could be viral, but I don't think it maintained its app
store position.

If they are closing in on 1m returning daily actives, that's pretty sweet. If
it's 1 million total users who ever signed up, that's actually a bit of a
concern given how many downloads they should have gotten when they were
topping the app store charts.

I'm far to old to use this app with my friends but it seemed like a much more
friendly version of Google Hangouts, which my sister, who is in their target
demographic, uses quite often.

They are definitely onto something, just literally follow any kid around, and
they all like to video chat with their friends in real-time, and they snapchat
doesn't solve that specific problem for them (yet).

------
whoisjuan
Their barriers to entry, from a technical perspective, are too low... The
possible scenarios for this product are:

1) Fad Success like the one experimented by YikYak (same target demographic)
and then struggling to maintain growth and traction.

2) Getting copied by Snap, Facebook, Twitter (perhaps even Google now that
they have Allo) and repeating Meerkat's faith.

3) Reaching an inflection point that allows them to have growth and traction
(like the one Snapchat had in its early years) and had decent exit by being
acquired by any of the companies in #2.

It's hard to tell which one would be, but as I said the barriers to entry are
very low. I would expect Facebook or another big company releasing something
similar in the short term.

~~~
lanewinfield
When it comes to social networks, when has it ever been about technical
barriers? Facebook could (and did) copy Snapchat at any point through its
rise, but it failed—and not because of technical issues.

