Five Ways Meerkat Could Open The Floodgates Of Revenue & Users Within The Next 12 Months
The last few weeks have been pretty crazy for Meerkat.
I signed up for Meerkat on Feb. 28th and I’m hooked.
Meerkat is currently one of the most talked about apps in the technology world and has been turning heads every single day with something new.
Meerkat has delivered people with behind the scenes event access.
Meerkat has allowed entrepreneurs to give sneak peeks on products.
Meerkat in just a few weeks has already made an impact.
What does the future hold for Meerkat? I have no idea. None of us do. But I do have a couple thoughts after playing with it over the last couple weeks for how I think Meerkat will grow both users and revenue.
1. Partner With Large Scale Events & Festivals
Whether it’s a concert, a conference, a sporting event, a political event or even a protest — one of Meerkat’s most interesting experiences is going to happen during live events. Locking in partnerships with events like Coachella or SXSW will be huge wins for Meerkat if they could establish official streams that were managed by event staff.
Imagine your favourite artist taking control of a Meerkat stream for a few minutes and taking the viewers behind the scenes? Imagine your favourite actress taking you through her home MTV Cribs-style? Or imagine your favourite artist simply streaming from their perspective as thousands of people jump in the air to the sound of their beat?
That’s when the magic will happen.
2. Acquire Creatives From Vine & YouTube
Outside of the fact that I’m fully buying into the hype — I agree with Bianca that Meerkat needs to tap into some of the mainstream influencers.
To reiterate a point Bianca made a few tweets later — the guy in the Vine above (Reggie Couz) has more than 1 billion loops and more than 2.3 million followers. Reggie is just one of the thousands of other Vine celebrities who have built a HUGE following by creating entertaining & engaging content.
If Meerkat can tap into these folks (who already have massive followings) and get them to use Meerkat — it will again, drive a significant increase in the number of people using the app simply from their existing fans.
Pro Tip: Leverage the existing leaderboard gamification with celebs but take it to the next level by giving people “verified creators” accounts.
3. Host AMA’s With People Outside Of Tech
The Mark Suster AMA streamed on Meerkat was awesome.
Apparently Danielle Morrill had one too but I missed that ☹
In case you are not familiar with what an AMA is, it is short for “Ask Me Anything”. It’s a format where people open themselves up for questions from the masses. I’ve enjoyed the Meerkat streams from folks like James Andrews and Ryan Hoover but this one was a bit different.
Rather than giving a glimpse into his day-to-day life; Mark offered the audience an opportunity engage in an Ask Me Anything style conversation. By the end of the 2 hour event, a little over 1000 people tuned in and watched it all go down. Throughout the entire event, I couldn’t help but think about the different ways that Meerkat could have an impact.
The difference between a live streaming experience and what a user would have on Snapchat is the real time interaction. Someone streaming live on Meerkat can read comments and take actions based on what the viewers are saying. This will offer musicians, brands and celebrities an opportunity to have meaningful dialogue with their fans and give fans an exclusive experience that only the people watching that stream will experience.
Thoughts From The @Msuster AMA on Meerkat
Immediate thoughts during the AMA:
- First person perspective — This is powerful. It felt like I was sitting across from Mark and having this conversation one on one. In reality, I’m on the other side of the continent in an ice tundra known as Nova Scotia.
- The Quora effect — Mark talked about this in his AMA. Meerkat feels like the early days of Quora. A channel where you can interact with some of the most influential folks in tech and get one-on-one answers.
- Celebs Are Going To Break This Thing — At around the 600–700 people point, my stream started to get a little bit glitchy. I know it’s still the early days but when Justin Beiber does an AMA, it will be checkmate on the Meerkat servers.
Pointers For Future Meerkat AMA Viewers:
- Listen closely because this is like a live conversation. If you miss a point that was golden - you miss it. It’s pretty special that way. This isn’t like a podcast where you can press rewind — the content is gone when it’s gone and the experience you’re having will disappear when the stream ends.
- Ask a question as soon as the person saying the answer finishes and your question will be at the bottom when they start looking for a new question. The fact that there’s an auto scroll mechanism within Meerkat allows for you to sorta jump the line and ensure your question gets asked.
Note: This tip was what I used to get both of my questions answered.
4. Acquire Snapchats Early Adopters For Brand Acquisition
Any company that was willing to jump on Snapchat in the early days is going to be willing or at least interested in Meerkat. The pitch is quite simple:
Do something cool and worth talking about for a few minutes on Meerkat and your brand will be written about in a handful of media outlets.
Of course, it’s going to be important to talk about engagement, users, average time spent watching a Meerkat, etc, etc, etc..
This media focused line is only going to work for the next couple months until the next new social network goes viral. After that, the value proposition when pitching Meerkat is going to be more closely linked to the case studies developed in the next couple months.
5. Users Pay To Stream More Than Sixty Minutes
I’d guesstimate that 500–600 people stayed on the Mark Suster AMA for the entire 2 hours. Paying based on stream time has two chicken & egg situations that would need to be considered:
- Users Pay To Watch More: This is possible if there are a few key users developing high quality content on the regular. (Long Term)
- Streamers Pay To Stream: This is possible if streamers feel they are benefiting from having people watch their live streams.
Both of these options require a clear value add from the payee side of things. We pay to access Netflix because we know we’ll be entertained. Because Meerkat is such a live and in the moment experience; selling ads is going to be a very forced and interruption based approach. If you force someone to skip an ad before watching a live stream — you’re going to damage the user experience to a point of no return. But there’s tons of monetization options:
- Give the ability to host private chats to premium users
- Give the ability to pay for HD streaming
- Focus on growth and then charge $750,000 per ad
Alright.
That’s all I’ve got for tonight.
