Until we meet again, Blab

While it was a difficult decision to make, and an even more difficult thing to write so transparently, I really appreciate what Shaan Puri and his team have done. They built something really cool, and captured the hearts and minds of millions of people in less than a year.

That’s more than any startup I’ve ever built.

Yet, one thing I can’t help but reflect on is that I saw this coming. And it has nothing to do with Blab. In fact, I’ve had a version of this theory drafted for a while but never published it because I wanted to sit back and observe for a while to see if my theory had any merit whatsoever.

The fate of Meerkat, Blab, and a few others who remained under the radar have confirmed my suspicions.

There is a real challenge that all video streaming apps face, and nobody has acknowledged yet; people’s greatest fear.

Most human beings are terrified of public speaking. And while most streaming apps can be limited to stream only to select groups or friends, live streaming is being mostly marketed as a form of public broadcasting.

For extroverts like myself, Brian Fanzo @iSocialFanz, Mia Voss, Vincenzo Landino, Amy Schmittauer and loads of others who love storytelling in the limelight, this is what we’ve always dreamed of. But for the average Jane, this is what their nightmares are made of — having to stand in front of a wide audience and ‘perform’ to an extent.

I look at a live streaming app and go, “Yay! A chance to reach the world with my ideas!” While someone like my smokin’ hot wife looks at a live streaming app and says, “Nope.”

Live streaming, in its current perception, will never reach mass adoption. The key word here is perception. And perception, of course, is the work (good or bad) of marketing.

As long as the mass perception of live streaming is that of public broadcasting, it will never reach the critical mass the tech industry dreams about.

You can have all the talent of BLAB, Periscope, and Meerkat combined, but unless you can change the mass perception of live streaming, adoption levels will still fall far below expectations.

And my final question here is this — does live streaming even need the mass adoption levels that tech giants seek? You tell me.