The new frontier of social is… live streaming
With SXSW just started — the pace where twitter boomed in 2007 — the advent of Meerkat and the latest news about twitter itself buying competing company Periscope (not yet launched!).
Following the Snapchat ephemerality trend these apps are letting people live stream their life through twitter, with a main difference that Periscope let archive video and has user comments which would replay as-live on the video when seen in catch-up mode.
What is Meerkat: “Meerkat allows you to stream live video from your phone to all of your Twitter followers at once. Press ‘Stream’, and instantly your live video stream shows up in your follower’s Twitter feeds.”
About Periscope: “When you open Periscope, you can see live broadcasts happening now or watch recently recorded ones. Periscope will allow both public and private broadcasts. You’ll be able to blast out a link to your stream to Twitter and have it show up on the Periscope home screen, or alternatively privately invite a few friends to watch.”
A latest addition being now stre.am : “Share your world. Broadcast or watch live video from around the world directly from theStream app on your phone. From street soccer in Madrid to band practices in basements, users from around the world share unique moments every day.”
Even if apps like that already existed — livestream for example — these new round started with a simpler full social approach.
Is it now the time everybody will be a broadcaster?
In sport this may have an immediate impact as any sport property will immediately worry about the proliferation of live feeds from events out of the rights tightly controlled ecosystem.
For sport this new social trend may instead create opportunities for innovative storytelling which can easily reach audiences and keep them engaged for longer periods of time and offer new monetisation chances.
A mix of tech bloggers, media outlets and brands are starting to be present on the meerkat platform and basically mostly experimenting with it.
