Periscope Defeats Meerkat in Live Video Streaming Battle
I was wondering what all the hype was about regarding Meerkat launching at SXSW recently. So I downloaded it to see for myself why celebrities were touting it to be such an amazing app. I have to say I was slightly disappointed, even though the interface is very easy to use and very intuitive. So I started livestreaming while I was at a co-working space working with my team. The video started streaming and I waited for people to start following and watching the stream, yet no one ever came, which was a little upsetting of course. Now I used my business account which has over 6000+ real fans that we’ve amassed over the past two years, and I would’ve expected them to start tuning in because they retweet and favorite our posts quite often. But no one ever came.
So of course I tried it again another day, and the same thing happened. And I realized that Meerkat was more hype than anything else. Of course I was following all of the articles regarding Periscope and how Twitter bought them for $120 Million before they even launched, and how Twitter was giving Meerkat a problem with the API access to the Twitter feed. So today I downloaded Periscope to find out what all the hype was about regarding yet another live video streaming app. I have to say I’m quite impressed, quite the opposite of Meerkat in a couple of different ways.
Whereas with Meerkat you have a live stream and people can check you out and you can upload your stream or save it to your camera roll, Periscope has user engagement built in, which is very different. For example in my first live Periscope, people started following me almost immediately and jumping on to watch my live stream, and then started commenting about the song that was playing in the background, and then they started asking me questions. It dawned on me, I could easily start talking about my app/company and see if people would be interested. Lo and behold, they were, and they started asking me questions about my app, and so I answered them and then asked him to take my survey. I also started speaking in French and found that someone else was French and we had a micro-conversation. Hearts kept popping up on the screen, which meant people were loving my live feed, and in total I had 35 people watch my very first live Periscope. 35 beats 0 any day of the week!
I guess you can say I instantly fell in love with Periscopes’ functionality and user experience. For me, if Meerkat and Periscope were in a boxing ring, Periscope would win by a technical knockout and take the title as heavyweight champion of the live video streaming world.
