Meerkat Learns Buzz Doesn't Always Mean Business | Hacker News Reader

Meerkat Learns Buzz Doesn't Always Mean Business

bloomberg.com

15 pointsdrsilberman15 comments

I am still absolutely struggling to see a popular use case for these applications. I would be interested to read about how those who financed/invested in these products, Meerkat in particular, came to the conclusion that it was worth a punt.

The only time I heard Meerkat being mentioned was in the context of Periscope stepping into its place at launch time. The only time I've heard about Periscope being used since its launch was in reading about HBO shutting down those streaming GoT on it.

"If you build it, they will come" seems to have been morphed into "If you build it, hopefully they'll find a reason to use it" here.

The use case is narcissism. Narcissism is a huge market, especially in Silicon Valley, which is how Meerkat took off in the first place. (I am not a fan of the "influencer" culture.)

There are arguments that personal live streaming can be used for "empathy," but that's not a typical use case and would not be worth $50M-$100M anyways.

Who needs "an online message platform that restricts your messages to 140 characters"?

Oh wait ...

It feeds into a growing desire for immediacy, which wanky trend types call 'nowism'. People are becoming less and less interested in what has happened, and increasingly focused on what is happening right this second. It's much more desirable to see what's going on backstage at Glastonbury right this second than a recording of what happened earlier that day.

The easiest way to get attention from the media is by creating something that the media is interested in. Internet media types love the idea of citizen journalists submitting live video from breaking events, so it's an appealing angle for them to write about. The story (what Meerkat could do) is a lot more exciting than the current reality (how many people are _actually_ using Meerkat).

Like Twitter, it's a not-especially-good idea that's one major celebrity thinking it's cool or a couple of major livestreamed incidents away from being potentially pretty big. Integration with existing social networks is going to be the key bit for regular users though, as the average person wants to passively showcase the cool thing they're doing to their friends rather than random members of the public.

It's not a hugely novel idea though; a couple of days ago we had an article on the first girl to lifestream her life, in 1996.

There is a reason, but the audience is the one who choices it's popularity and for what reason they personally use it.

Twitch.tv is exactly this BUT they show the screen and a webcam of the person. You can see both the face and screen of a person. Mostly this is used for people streaming games but others use it while they program and talk to people how they are coding. Others use it for podcasting.

These apps can answer a need, but so often we can't tell the future of what sticks with a group of people. That is why the company that is doing Meerkat is planning to create many apps and fail often to find the app that fits a need that they don't know about currently.

Having skipped Instagram, Snapchat and such, I'm surprised to find myself incredibly enthusiastic about Periscope and Meerkat. I really think they're onto something here.

I've watched a number of streams of people showing things they're working on, streams of events people are at, etc. It's incredible - you feel like you're there, participating even. Live streaming has existed for years, but it has never been this easy to create streams and view streams. Just hit a button and you're showing what you're seeing to your Twitter followers. Or, if you're browsing Twitter, tap a link and you're seeing what they're seeing.

I'm especially looking forward to events such as WWDC, Google I/O, CES, etc: will be fascinating to get realtime access.

> I'm especially looking forward to events such as WWDC, Google I/O, CES, etc: will be fascinating to get realtime access

Holding your phone up and recording a livestream of pay-for-access events will not only likely get you kicked out (I believe Coachella cracked down on it), but it is very disrespectful toward the other attendees. That's one of the many reasons why personal livestreaming doesn't work.

I downloaded periscope and the first stream I found was a guy on his lunch break walking through a state park in Fort Lauderdale, FL (My Home Town, live in the Bay Area now) As he was walking down the path he would come to forks in the path and people would tell him to go left or right. It was really interesting on multiple levels, seeing a place you know live from across the country and interacting with the person on the other end you don't know. However, I'm not sure I would continue to use the app every day as the novelty wears off and it's hard to continually find quality content.

When are we going to learn? Ripping some tech PR and being at SXSW getting PMF with techies and media-types for a product that needs mainstream traction is a death-knell.

The same happened with Secret/Whisper last year and I commented that based on my focus groups in the Midwest, Yik Yak was going to clean their clock. And they did.

It's because mobile is so pervasive and mainstream we need to look at the market from a mature distribution perspective. Dare I say even from a packaged goods perspective. How do you get a new brand of yogurt on the shelves? What's the quality bar necessary? If you win at distribution where everyone lives, you win period.

The "Crossing the Chasm" Christensen model that worked for Google over a decade ago when the preferred medium of distribution of a tech product was not mainstream does not apply today for consumer.

The live-streaming market is still young. I doubt Meerkat's investors are expecting profits or a viable business model any time soon (this seems like the classic "build a user base and figure out the rest later" model). While buzz may not mean business, it definitely creates opportunity.

Actually it does..it's just not sustainable under its current incarnation. The buzz factor is real and meerkat team have earned brand equity that can be used for countless other projects for years to come.

"Brand equity" doesn't work if people forget your startup within weeks.

Easy come, easy go.

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