Meerkat is a mobile app that enables users to broadcast live-video streaming through their mobile device. Launched in 2015, it's been bombarded with heavy competitors with similar feature but a lot more influence. Meerkat is small, and it's pivoting to be a better being.
Meerkat can't handle, or beat Facebook, Twitter and Periscope in its own game. The CEO of the company Ben Rubin wrote a memo to 48 of his investors, talking about a change to grow a new market when big players have jumped to the same race.
"As long as we are competing on those with Twitter/Periscope and Facebook Live, we don't think the current Meerkat product is set up to win," wrote Rubin in his memo.
Meerkat is the live-streaming app that played a big role on the 2015 annual SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. Rubin that saw the moment as a good one, realized that after the moment passed, Meerkat was like being squashed.
"The year started on a high note. … But over the year, it became rougher waters," he said. "Mobile broadcast video hasn't quite exploded as quickly as we'd hoped. The distribution advantages of Twitter/Periscope and Facebook Live drew more early users to them away from us and we were not able to grow as quickly alongside as we had planned."
Both Facebook and Twitter have put a significant amount of their resources to live video products.
Facebook initially opened live video broadcasting to celebrities in July 2015 before being opened to broadcasters on September and regular users in January 2016. At that time, Facebook was already having more than 31,000 users using the live video service, creating about 246,000 livestreams. All these livestreams resulted in more than 5.7 billion views.
Twitter launched Periscope in March 2015. The app has gained a lot of popularity and Periscope streams also appear on Twitter's timeline.
Huge existing user base has helped both Facebook and Twitter in reaching out its product. Meerkat on the other hand, had to build a network of user from scratch.
In other words, livestreaming business is hard for Meerkat. Going up against those social networks that are better established, Meerkat that offers virtually the same product, makes it exponentially harder to grow and thrives.
Not Quitting But Pivoting
Meerkat might be powerless if compared to the two social giants. But the company is not giving up, let alone quitting. It's changing its business model by pivoting and becoming something new.
The project to evolve first came to Rubin's mind on August 2015, and has been initiated since October.
Onwards, Meerkat has all but started to abandon its live-streaming business model in favor of a new thing: a social network where "everybody is always alive". The Meerkat app still works and lives, but its creators and developers have shifted their time and resources elsewhere.
"We found the best Meerkat moments happened when people who knew each other (either in person or online) came together live and interacted in real time," said Rubin who has yet to disclose Meerkat's strategy. "We saw this in the conversations when the threads would go on and on and on. We especially saw this in cameo when broadcasters were able to see their audience and interact in a more human way, people passed around the camera for a campfire chat session."
While Meerkat is having a rough time, the app's user base is still increasing. The service kept having new added users every month, but the vast majority of them didn't stick around. The trouble comes from it's struggle to find more people willing to broadcast in a consistent manner.
The number of broadcasters on Meerkat peaked in May 2015 at around 100,000 people. But since then, that number never grew despite the app has packed with numerous new features, including an integration with GoPro in July.
"It's different than sharing photographs - think of it this way: before Instagram, people already knew what constituted a beautiful photo and tried to take them. With live video no one really knows what 'good' live video they can create is."
Rubin's announcement may take Meerkat out of the race. But his decision also highlights the challenges in the livestreaming space.
"While live video has become an interesting feature on top of Twitter and Facebook, it hasn't yet developed into a self-sustaining new network as we hoped we would do with Meerkat," said Rubin. "All of these platforms are struggling to create repeat broadcasters at a growing rate and the viewership isn't much higher today than we thought it was last summer."
