Meerkat To Step Away From Live Streaming

By @TheMarkDalton

Remember Meerkat? The app that started the live streaming boom? Well they are planning a change of approach away from the open, public livestreaming that they have been known for and will instead focus on other video-centric social networking features.

Meerkat still attracts a decent number of viewers however CEO Ben Rubin told Re/code recently that the company is struggling to maintain an active user base of streamers. The problem that Meerkat faces is simple yet almost impossible for them to tackle.

Meerkat made a splash at SXSW last March and for a short period of time it was the talk of the tech world. It was the first app to bring live streaming on a large scale to social media devices. However, the big boys clearly saw how live streaming was going to take off so they brought in their own tools and effectively shoved Meerkat to the side.

Twitter bought Periscope and launched a much more polished and feature rich live streaming app while Facebook introduced their own live streaming tools later on in the year which is now in the process of being made available to all users.

In a memo to investors, Meerkat explained that even though it is taking a step back from the current approach, they still see value in live streams. In fact, Meerkat has hinted at a new spin on live streaming which focuses on smaller groups of friends and family. Sounds kind of like Skype.

Meerkat is not giving any details on when change is coming and what exactly we should expect the new platform to be like. However, in the meantime you can still download the Meerkat app for iOS or Android and take it for a spin.