That Meerkat Moment

Meerkat CEO Ben Rubin gazing lovingly at his audience on his phone, while onstage at DEMO Traction.

That Meerkat moment is hard to describe. It’s when you’re streaming your life from your mobile phone to an audience of strangers and the conversation on your phone in response to your life is more interesting than what is going on around you. Meerkat CEO Ben Rubin must experience this all the time since he is always livestreaming his life through his app in an act of constant product-(and self)-promotion. I shared one of these Meerkat moments with him when he was onstage April 22, 2014 at DEMO Traction (the conference I produce).

Ben was explaining what Meerkat was all about while livestreaming himself as he gave his presentation. There he was with his mobile phone in one hand and the clicker for his slides in the other. About haflway through, I joined him onstage to interview him alongside Greylock VC Josh Elman, who recently led a $14 million round in the company. And, yes, I asked him about the threat of Periscope, whether he could use Facebook to leapfrog his Twitter-owned rival, and why live video is so much different than recorded video — watch the entire session below to see his responses.

Who is interviewing who? Meerkat CEO Ben Rubin gestures to the livestream behind him that he is capturing on his phone during an interview at DEMO Traction, with Greylock VC Josh Elman and DEMO executive producer Erick Schonfeld.

He was still Meerkatting as he answered my questions, with the session projected onto a large screen behind us. About a hundred people were tuning in and commenting on what we were saying in the app, and I couldn’t tell where the more interesting conversation was occurring. Every now and then, Ben would whisper to the people in his phone as if cooing to a child.

And that was the Meerkat moment. It didn’t matter that he was onstage in front of a live audience. What mattered was his Meerkat audience. Those were his people.