In the arena of live-streaming content, Meerkat was the best there ever was in 2015. This much-raved video streaming app has reportedly been shut down and pulled off from the app store today. Yes, the interest in Meerkat had started to fizzle a long time back as Periscope had come out with outstanding expectations then. And now, Meerkat is just dead.

The company backing the Meerkat has been said to shift its focus from public streaming to private social networking, Houseparty. The co-founder Ben Rubin announced that Meerkat has been pulled off from the app store.

https://twitter.com/benrbn/status/781914958401384450

The company is currently focusing on a group video chat application that lets 8 people jump into parties with a drop-in-drop-out style. The company is calling it a “synchronous social network” — a place to be together even when you’re apart. This move came when Periscope had taken over the live streaming market by a huge margin and Twitter had taken it under its umbrella. Turns out, Meerkat users didn’t want to broadcast themselves on a regular basis and a little more scratching revealed that they enjoyed live-streaming only when their friends and family could do it together. Hence, Houseparty.

The travel marketing community had also passed an ‘Aye’ in the favour of Periscope as it was quick to surge ahead and attract numerous brands as well as users. Although it has more to live up to after Facebook integrated live videos feature in its app, one thing is clear; one of its competitors has closed shop and moved to private broadcasting.

Source: Techcrunch

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Periscope, the live streaming app which was acquired by Twitter, gave mobile live broadcasting the initial push. Meerkat also offered similar feature but Periscope was quick to surge ahead and attract a large number of users and brands. All of a sudden everyone was becoming a news reporter, travel blogger, broadcaster and what not. However the initial attention did wear off soon and the number of active users started going south.

Facebook borrowed the live video feature from Periscope and now Periscope is trying to hit back with some new features. The first feature that they have added is ‘sketch’. As teenagers would tell you, this feature is inspired by the similar feature in Snapchat. You can simply tap the screen, select ‘sketch’ and start doodling on the screen. So at this point, it appears that the social platforms are picking pages from the success story of other social platforms.

https://twitter.com/periscopeco/status/725452090244521984

https://twitter.com/periscopeco/status/725454938923491329

Previously Periscope changed the layout of the app to make it easier for users to discover streams. Now they have also introduced viewer graphs for broadcasters (iOS) so that they can see how many people watched the stream and how many watched the replays. This is something both users and brands would be interested in.

In other news, China now has an answer to Periscope and the app is called Yizhibo. Periscope is banned in mainland China and it will be interesting to see how this one fits in the tightly controlled social ecosystem.

The post With the fight for live getting fierce, is Periscope trying to lure brands? appeared first on TravHQ.

After letting the celebrities and journalists enjoy the Periscope rival for a while, Facebook is now testing the live streaming feature for average users on iOS in US. While Periscope opens up your video stream to the whole world, the live stream on Facebook will be available for your friends to watch. Also unlike Periscope, your Live broadcasts are saved and remain visible on your timeline.

According to their product managers, this has been added to make your friends and family feel like they are in the moment with you. While Periscope and Meerkat were quick to gain popularity, the interest of masses faded away quickly. Facebook might bring back the trend by catering to a slightly different set of audience. Travellers will love to share their adventures with friends and family more than strangers and this might give the Live Video feature a push. The fact that videos are archived might result into more people adopting it.

They have also added a new sharing format called ‘Collages’ that travellers are surely going to love. Collages are group of photos and videos that they can share on their Facebook wall. The feature can be found under the upload a photo option and Facebook will offer the option to pick multiple media files. As you scroll through the Collage, the videos will autoplay. This will allow people to create interesting collages of their trips or special events and showcase them in one place.

In a bid to stay useful to relevant audience, Facebook is quickly adapting and opening up to new media formats. We recently saw them introduce 360 degree videos and soon we might see even more options for sharing. This will help them stay strong against other fast growing platforms like Snapchat.

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