Meerkat -The Next Big Thing, Isn't Always Big.
As Marketing Journalists finalize the inevitable " What Periscope means for Brands" pieces, give a thought to how quickly the next big thing dies.
We spend most of our lives looking back, we look at the rapid pace of change and these accelerated times and confidently and correctly assert that things have never changed so fast.
Yet if we look the other way we see something more profound, exciting and disturbing, things will never be this slow again.
We've always had fads, we had Second Life in 2007, Chatroulette and Farmville in 2010. We've had Angry Birds, Candy Crush and more.
What I love about this chart is it shows how each and every successive game.
1) Reaches a higher peak of interest
2) Has a steeper curve of adoption.
3) Lasts a shorter amount of time.
If we compare this to how people used to behave it's clear to see the difference.
Below we see the old world brands of Super Mario, Tetris and Sonic the Hedgehog compared against Candy Crush.
The list of things "destined to be huge" continues to grow.
Remember the time when everyone talked about SoLoMo apps and we had Color, Highlight and Sonar.
And a little later we talked about NextDoor and Path as the next big thing.
We had Flappy Bird explode and die in seconds.
It's not just apps, popular culture now moves so fast that we mock the brand that jumped on Harlem Shake two weeks late, the Ice Bucket Challenge one week late or the White and Gold/Blue and Black dress 6 hours too late.
From Lama day to Loom bands, 'Ello to Secret , Yo to Meerkat, we live in times where things explode at a lightening speed, become hyped, the next big thing, a gamechanger and then an utter irrelevance in days.
It's worth noting that we now live in a time of "peak app", we're now fully "mediated". We once could create new media opportunities, but now we look at our phones in elevators, we check them while watching TV and now our phone homescreen is taken, heck, for most people the first 4 screens are taken. Every moment is now catered for, every new app must replace an old app. The question for apps in 2015 is not the same as it was in 2000. It's not not whether this app is better than being bored, it's whether it's preferable to something else we already have and love.
For me the most interesting dilemma at this moment in time is to balance the incumbents vs the challengers.
On the one hand in 2020 I can't possibly imagine SnapChat, LinkedIn, Yelp, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter being dominant.
I simply refuse the believe that these generally badly designed apps that happened to shoot to number one won't be replaced by better examples. Especially when the social graph makes viral signup effects so simple.
On the other hand it's incredibly to me how every app designed to replace them so quickly dies.
So give a moments thought to everything new before you think everything will be different.
1) Think of the unchanging man, our habits and needs are oddly prehistoric despite the times we live in. Do this new app feed our need to express ourselves, connect, be loved, be secure etc.
2) Think of what this replaces, is it genuinely more interesting to Periscope to a random person that to see what our mum is doing or see beautiful pictures of our friends?
It's always good to try new things, to test and learn, but in that case, make sure you learn, there will be a lot of fast failures.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Again this is a stub of a piece that one day I will write based on feedback I get.
SVP, Executive Producer at Wayfarer Studios
9 年Really interesting to see the data plotted out like that. Hype and fads are indeed louder and more widespread, while lasting shorter amounts of time, but it's important to be able to separate the truly gamechangin (i.e. the truly big things) from the momentary fancies. The gamechanging tech and advances, whether the original hyped company survives or not, are incredibly important and become a permanent (or at least lasting) part of our lives. For example, I believe that frictonless real-time video sharing will become a permanent part of our networks, devices and behaviors. Meerkat might or might not survive. Periscope might or might not help Twitter expand its audience. Snapchat, Facebook and others will develop their own answer to this consumer need that wasn't really apparent until the Meerkat hype. Point is, this taps into a zeitgeist that has been growing and is now ready for primetime, so the behavior, and the tech to support it, will probably be here to stay. On the other side are the Get Glues, the "viral videos", the Colors and the Highlights. A great example of failed attempts to tap into a zeitgeist that have proven to just not really be there...at least not in those executions. Really interesting exploration. Ezra Goldman hit the nail on the head -- this is the type of consideration that drives investing decisions every day.
Moving people at Upshift (Autonomous Car Subscription, 500 alum)
9 年This "fad" investing is what makes VC focus on non-disruptive tech, while brushing off truly disruptive innovation as the "window" may have already passed.
Founder of Jewel Content Marketing Agency | Truths & Memes | Content Strategy, Thought Leadership, Copywriting, Social Media 'n' Stuff for B2B & Tech
9 年Hard to imagine those social hubs you mentioned being knocked off their perches, but then again ten years ago it would have been hard to imagine Intel's decline from king of chips to also-ran. But then again, Intel was never really knocked off it's perch. It's just that the technology shifted and a new perch emerged next door. The same could happen again before 2020, but I think it would require another technology shift, whether it be wearables, AR, or something no one has even thought of yet.
Founder and CEO at Superintelligent - The AI Enablement Platform
9 年3. There is something very interesting about these company's prioritization of context over content that I think is a lot more than hype. Whether either Periscope or Meerkat get it right enough to push it mainstream is of course yet to be seen. There are plenty of other related companies that are just a little away from live streaming but still do synchronous and asynchronus video messages for private communities (like Glide) - maybe they're ultimately closer? Who knows? But I do know it's interesting and something that's worth leaning in a little bit to - if only to explore and ponder.
Founder and CEO at Superintelligent - The AI Enablement Platform
9 年2. The livestreaming example may be one that hits escape velocity. Livestreaming feels like a technology that at some point is going to cross mainstream. What I think we're feeling is that it's just on the very edge where it could fall either way. Based on past history, I'm a little less quick to think that a lot of people not knowing quite what to do with it at the beginning means its doomed for the rubbish heap of tech fad history. That's been the case with many breakout technologies, first of all. And second, there are some use cases that are immediate and obvious, or on the other hand powerful and unexpected but extremely compelling - ranging from live concert streaming - which has the whole music industry really speculating and engaged, to broadcasting key family events (like funerals) that far flung people can't be there for, to church pastors broadcasting sermons to congregations.