Mongoose versus Bird
The meerkat or suricate is a small carnivoran belonging to the mongoose family. It is the only member of the genus Suricata. Meerkats live in all parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, in much of the Namib Desert in Namibia and southwestern Angola, and in South Africa. (Source: Wikipedia)
Another Meerkat, this one based in San Francisco, is now capturing investors attention in Silicon Valley. The video live streaming app launched a month ago and its user base is skyrocketing. Last week, it had over 300,000 users that were growing at 30% day-over-day, so it is likely to be at 1 million users now! Also, according to app analytics firm AppAnnie, the Meerkat app has moved from #500 to #22 in the Social Category over the last two weeks…
The app is simple — users open the app and chose to start to live stream from their phone. The app is connected to the users’ Twitter profile and automatically tweets a link where followers can watch that live stream. It also allows for real-time conversation inside the stream among viewers. It will obviously be highly disruptive if and when something happens and no reporters are on site. The app will allow a user to be a quasi live reporter of what’s happening! Major news broadcasters like CNN for example will be broadcasting the live streams directly from the site…
Several large brands including Red Bull, Starbucks, Miami Dolphins, MTV and BuzzFeed are already testing the app. Red Bull, for example, broadcasted its Double Pipe snowboarding event two weeks ago.
Last week, Meerkat announced it raised a $14 million in a Series B investment from Greylock, Comcast Ventures, and other Silicon Valley investors. It had raised $3.7 million from Ooga Labs, Aleph and Entree Capital a year ago.
Smartphone enabled video live streaming is not new, but with the recent advances of smartphone technology, it is now emerging fast and is worth focusing on. Twitter was quick to respond and launch its own live streaming app Periscope last Thursday. Twitter had acquired Periscope’s team for an estimated $100 million before it had even launched the app. Periscope is now live and works identically to Meerkat, but it also allows users to save selected streams. (Disclosure: GSV owns shares in Twitter)
While it’s early in the game, Meerkat has a small lead over Twitter in what appears to be a very hot and nascent space.
As published in this week’s A 2 Apple http://bit.ly/1EmsvOP
