Meerkat, does it deserve all of this hype!

It all started when I read an article about a new complimentary social media application that raised 13 million dollars of funds while it was released within the past 2 months. I am always interested in new technologies and digital business ideas and I don’t question myself twice on downloading new apps and discovering what they got new to offer. The same happened with Meerkat, I have been busy with it for the past 2 days and it had occupied a lot of my thinking time. So I decided to write my thoughts in this article. Not because I just want to write, it is because I want to document my initial thoughts about the product and revisit them in few months. I want to see if I am right in my initial assessment or I am going too far.

As any new user, I skimmed over the tutorial of the app and went directly into action. There is a place where you can write “what is happening” and a button to stream. So I didn’t bother to write anything, and I clicked stream to see what is next. It asked to access my camera and I clicked yes of course. And I saw my room from the camera view, and saw few buttons at the bottom of the screen. I was looking around the screen wondering what I should do next, to actually notice in few seconds that around 3 people are watching my stream live! I am not going to say what they were watching, probably something boring, or maybe not!

There are many issues so far in the app that I think will be resolved over time. As an example, many live streams are for testing by normal people like me and you. By the time you click on the link, the stream is over. Therefore it is not so easy to view an attractive stream of your choice. It won’t be long until people are really familiar with it and you will be able to find your interesting streams very easily, by following Meerkaters who are of an interest to you. (P.S. A Meerkater is a person who is using Meerkat. I know it is obvious, but just to make my article longer). I also find the features of the app to be very basic, I thought of many things that I would like to do in the app itself, but I was not able to. It could be a strategy by the company by the way! I wanted a list of all recent streams through the app, but this was not available. I had to go to twitter and search for the live streams. Being a new user, I wasn’t following any Meerkater, so the app cannot suggest the next scheduled streams. I just found out about a community of developers creating apps around the Meerkat app, one of them being able to give you a list of all live streams sorted by the most popular. This could be the strategy, focus on the live streaming of 1 to many and video delivery while leaving the add on features to the community. I personally think that this is smart!

I read many supportive articles and some predict that it is going to be the next thing after Snapchat and some think it is going to beat it. At the same time I saw a review of a famous author saying “Don’t waste your time, you don’t need it!”.

I find the concept very creative and that the product is going to take the social media to yet another dimension, as the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have done. Create a new social dimension that people who are currently using the app are not aware of. I don’t see it as a platform for personal use only. I think a new form of private live TV can evolve on top of it. In youtube, people have their channel where videos are recorded and uploaded. Then followers leave some feedback for the producer to consider in their next video. With Meerkat people can have life interaction with comments and the presenter can adjust their stream based on what people want. I would see interactive educational classrooms being conducted, cooking classes, behind the scenes, red carpets, reality shows, you name it..

I will be waiting for a couple of months and revisit my initial thoughts. I will let you know if my views change!